


Most Definitely Ornery, Scandalous and Evil

by Marieke_things_dreams_and_stuff



Category: Supergirl (TV 2015)
Genre: 5x13, Angry Lena Luthor, Bonding, Canon-Typical Violence, Confused but loving Kara Danvers, Dangerous Lena Luthor, Evil Lena Luthor, F/F, Hurt Kara Danvers, Jealous Lena Luthor, Kara Danvers Needs a Hug, Kara believes in Lena Luthor, Kara’s inconvenient ways of trapping villains, Kryptonite, Lena Luthor Knows Kara Danvers Is Supergirl, Lena Luthor is Extra, Lena Luthor is jealous of herself?, Lex Luthor Being an Asshole, Metallo Lena Luthor, Protective Alex Danvers, Protective Lena Luthor, desperate Kara Danvers, even if she's out to kill her, hurt comfort, supergirl 100th episode
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2020-03-29
Updated: 2021-02-12
Packaged: 2021-02-28 23:02:59
Rating: Mature
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 5
Words: 35,782
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/23384950
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Marieke_things_dreams_and_stuff/pseuds/Marieke_things_dreams_and_stuff
Summary: Post 5x13Following the 100th episode of Supergirl, Metallo Lena crosses universes and ends up at LuthorCorp, set on getting her revenge on Supergirl. Kara not only has to deal with someone trying to kill her again, she also has to explain to her best friend why and how her carbon-copy is walking around LuthorCorp, and has to keep her sister from actually killing the Other Lena.And why is it easier to talk to the Other Lena who wants to kill her than it is to talk to her actual best friend?Or,Evil Lena ends up in National City and Kara can't seem to stay away from her. Her Lena isn't too pleased.
Relationships: Kara Danvers/Lena Luthor
Comments: 345
Kudos: 1393





	1. Chapter 1

“… which would eventually lead to a decrease in criminal activity, having taken into account the 3.4% projected decrease in criminal recidivism and – ”

Kara yawned.

She couldn’t help it. She’d been up for hours, trying to help Nia fight crime in the city, fighting off William’s advances while delivering her articles to Andrea on time, and scheduling extra time for Alex to freak out about how amazing and wonderful Kelly was.

There was so much to do, and so little time to do it in, even for someone as inhumanly fast as her.

She was exhausted.

And it didn’t help that Lex had called her into his office for a dry meeting on crime-fighting statistics and whatnot. She had so much trouble keeping up with his monotonous droning about things she had a hard time trying to be excited about.

“I’m sorry,” Lex swiveled in his chair. “Am I boring you?”

Kara sighed and continued doodling on her notepad, instead of taking the notes Lex had suggested she did. So far she had written:

Crime bad.  
Numbers good.  
Have to be better

And then a whole lot of doodles ranging from flying dogs to the house of El crest had followed.

An over-exaggerated cough from next to her made Kara look up. Alex was giving her a meaningful look, motioning her head from Kara to Lex’s direction. Kara raised her head to see Lex’s annoyed grimace and realized his comment had been directed at her.

“Oh, sorry,” she said, not sounding as apologetic as Lex would surely wish her to be, “what did you say?”

Lex sighed.

“Were you even paying attention?”

“Eh,” Kara glanced down at her notes. “Crime is bad and we have to do better?” she guessed.

Lex sighed even deeper.

“Supergirl,” he shook his head in mock-disappointment, “you seem distracted lately. You’re not paying attention in our meetings, your performances on the street are subpar – ”

Kara rolled her eyes at that.

“ – and to be completely honest, you don’t look so great. So what is up with my resident superhero, hmm? What’s keeping you from achieving your full potential?”

Kara resisted the urge to shoot a laserbeam through his head, but just barely.

“Nothing. Lot of work is all.”

Lex smiled.

“Oh, I get that. Lena and I have been working endlessly on our projects too, so, I understand being a little preoccupied.”

Kara clenched her jaw at the mention of him and Lena working together. She knew he just said it to get a rise out of her. She knew he loved taunting her, hurting her.

She wouldn’t give him the satisfaction of a reaction.

“However, Supergirl,” he continued, “being tired is no excuse for underperforming at your job. I’m in the meeting. Your sister’s in the meeting. If everybody contributes, I think it’s only fair that we expect the same from you, don’t you think?”

“I’m flying around all day and night saving people from danger. Forgive me if I feel like my work might preoccupy me just a tad more than you fiddling around in your lab,” she bit back.

Lex’s eyebrow twitched.

“Careful now, Supergirl. The things that come out of that lab have saved your hide multiple times.”

“You mean Lena has."

“I would watch your tone, Super – ”

“Lex!”

They all turned their heads when Lena Luthor, clad in a tight skirt, blouse and labcoat stormed into the room. She was panting and her heart was racing, Kara heard. She even noticed tiny beads of sweat on Lena’s forehead. Her hair had clearly been in a tight ponytail before, but some of the strands had gotten loose, and were sticking to the edges of her face. The red lipstick on her lips had been bitten off, a habit Kara knew Lena developed whenever she was very stressed about something.

Something was up. Something big enough to shake even Lena Luthor, of all people.

She barely spared Kara and Alex a glance, crossing the room in quick strides to get to Lex immediately.

“Lena, I’m in the middle of – ”

“You need to get down to the labs right away.”

“Can’t it wait?” Lex said impatiently, obviously annoyed at the interruption.

“No, it can’t,” Lena stressed. “We’ve got a situation. You’ve got to come down right away.”

Lex groaned.

“Lena – ”

“I’m not kidding, Lex. Now.”

She turned around and walked to the door before she paused, briefly. Almost as if a thought had only now occurred to her.

“Maybe Supergirl and Director Danvers should come too,” she said briskly before opening the door and walking out.

Lex sighed.

“The perks of working with a younger sibling,” he muttered. “There’s always something happening.”

“Well,” Alex said standing up, “at least the meeting finally got interesting.”

It earned her a dirty glare from Lex.

* * *

“So what are we looking at exactly?” Alex frowned, arms crossed over her chest.

A blue-ish, purple mass about the size of an office desk was floating above the ground, its surface rippling and moving around slowly.

“It seems to be some sort of portal,” Lena said, typing away on her tablet. “I’m picking up some foreign energy, but I can’t seem to locate it.”

Kara frowned, taking a step closer to the mass.

It almost seemed like a mirror they couldn’t see through. Like something was staring right back at them, they just couldn’t figure out what or who. The purple surface a living, taunting entity.

It was unsettling.

“Guys,” Kara said slowly when the surface of the blob started moving quicker, more pointed, in one direction instead of the weird rippling in all directions from before, “maybe we should clear out. This could be dangerous.”

The Luthors ignored her.

“Have you tried retracing its energy levels? There must’ve been a peak in radiation when this thing got here, it must’ve shown up before?”

“Of course I did that,” Lena snapped. “But it doesn’t seem to be from this earth. I’ve only picked up its signature here.”

Kara leaned back when the surface rippled again. This time it seemed to move in her direction. The power seemed to be going out, pushing against the edges, only constrained by the colored blob.

“Guys, I really think we should head out,” she said worriedly.

Alex took a step closer to her.

“I think it’s some sort of portal,” Lex said. “At least, it resembles the ones the Book of Destiny created.”

“I’ve got it!” Lena exclaimed. “It’s not from this earth, but it seems to be using energy from a different dimension!”

“Which one?” Lex asked eagerly, looking over his sister’s shoulder.

Lena and Kara answered at the same time.

“The fifth one.”

Lena frowned and looked at Kara for the first time that day.

“How did you…?”

“Run,” Kara said, before repeating it louder. “Run!”

Before the word had left her lips, there was a strong push from inside the purple mass. The mass seemed to melt away, disintegrating on the spot, and opening up.

A figure clad in black pushed through the opening.

Too stunned to move, Lex and Lena watched in horror and enthrallment as a beautiful woman with jet-black hair, clad in a black suit elegantly stepped out of the portal and into their lab.

For a split second, for one slow, holy moment, Kara thought she might be wrong.

The woman before her seemed so elegant, so frail, so delicate, that she couldn’t possibly be the menace that still haunted Kara’s nightmares. The woman seemed dazed by the sudden shift in realities, surprised by the sudden change.

Kara almost felt a protective urge to help her, to take her hand and steady her. To make sure she was alright.

But the relief she felt was fleeting. 

The woman groaned, stretching her neck, the green eyes Kara knew were there, closed. She lifted her head and turned around slowly, before opening her eyes, and carefully - slowly - observing the room.

Her eyes fell on Lena. She looked at the woman for a milli-second, not the slightest bit unfazed, before she moved on.

Kara heard Lena gasp. She couldn’t blame her. She’d reacted way stronger when she saw her own distorted face looking back at her on at least two occasions.

A dark, powerful Lena stood in the middle of the room in front of the dissipating portal. She barely seemed to notice its disappearance. She looked just as Kara remembered her in her nightmares. Cold, cool, distant, and overwhelmingly, stupidly gorgeous.

Dangerous.

The dark Lena didn’t seem at all deterred seeing her own face stare back at her. Either she’d anticipated it, or she just didn’t care at all. She didn’t bother addressing her own doppelgänger. Instead, she let her eyes drift over the room. She barely spared Lex and Alex a chance before she let her eyes settle on Kara.

The calm expression that had been on her face disappeared quickly. It morphed into some twisted version of determination, and Kara felt her heart sink into her stomach.

“Lena,” she whispered.

“You,” she growled softly.

Kara’s eyes widened.

“Okay, run, run, run!” she yelled, quickly darting around the room to take Alex, Lena and Lex in a tight grip, before zapping away from the lab as fast as she could.

She contemplated leaving Lex for just a tad longer than she morally wished she had, but she took him anyway.

Kara zapped through the staircases as fast as she could, blowing stacks of papers out of people’s hands as she went. She felt slightly bad, but helping LuthorCorp’s employees to gather their work couldn’t be her priority right now. She rushed past Lena’s security team, past her secretary, and past Lillian Luthor’s office.

She got them all into Lena’s – Lex? – office and locked the door, panting hard.

“Lillian?” she asked quickly.

“Ugh, out,” Lex groaned, clutching his head in his hands.

Kara sighed in relief. One less awful person to rescue.

“Okay,” Lena said, standing on wobbly legs but not letting that deter her from her righteous anger. “What. The Fuck. Was that?”

“Ehm?”

“Did everyone see a second Lena?” Alex asked. “Did everyone just see that? Like a second, a double – am I going insane?”

“A Lena from another dimension,” Lex mumbled to himself. “Lena Luthor 2.0, so to speak.”

“I mean, she looked like Lena,” Alex reasoned with herself. “And we’ve had doppelgängers before.”

“Fascinating,” Lex mumbled to himself. “An exact copy of Lena.”

“Maybe Maxwell Lord had anything to do with it? Bizarro Lena?”

"A Lena from another world."

"I mean there were definitely two of them. Two Lenas."

“She knew you,” Lena interrupted them.

She was standing stock-still, leaning heavily on the desk. Her eyes burned intensely as she looked at Kara.

“She knew you. She said so.”

Kara swallowed and wrung her hands together.

“I, eh, yeah, I don’t – ”

“You knew it was fifth dimensional even before I did,” Lex said.

“Well, I – ”

“You told us to run even before she crawled out of that portal.”

“Not so much crawl as – ”

“Cut the crap!” Lena yelled and Kara physically recoiled. “Why the hell is there a version of me traveling between dimensions, and how does she know you?”

Alex’s eyes widened.

“Oh my God,” she said. “Oh my God.”

“Alex – ”

“Tell me it’s not who I think it is.”

“Well…”

“Kara!”

“Well it’s not my fault!” Kara exclaimed. “How could I have possibly known she’d come here? She’s supposed to be hypothetical. As in, not real. As in, she can’t hurt us!”

“She seemed pretty real to me!"

“Will someone just tell me who she is?” Lena asked loudly. “That is my copy strutting around there! I demand to know!”

Kara and Alex exchanged a worried look.

Boy, if Lena wasn’t angry before…

“It’s kind of a long story,” Kara said quickly, already scanning the room for safe places. “Maybe we should explain it on the way to a safe house or something.”

“No,” Lena yelled. “You will tell us, and you will tell us now!”

“Just get her the cliff-notes version!” Alex said, already going through her back-up ammunition to see how much firepower she had.

“Right,” Kara muttered. “Right. Cliff-notes.”

Lena did not look patient at all, so Kara decided to quickly get to the point.

“Okay, so, ehm, it all started when Mxyzptlk, Mxy, for short, showed up in my apartment.”

“I’m sorry – Mxyzptlk?” Lex asked.

“Yes, he’s like a reality-bending trickster. Anyway, he showed up when Mon-El and I had just started dating and he was just, pfff, awful!” Kara explained, shaking her head. “He was all like: I want to marry you, and I will destroy the city if you won’t! And then – ”

“I’m sorry,” Lena interrupted, “he tried to marry you?”

“Yes!” Kara exclaimed. “Got me this really gorgeous wedding dress too! It was strapless and had like a gorgeous waist, but spread out into this huge princess-like – ”

“Cliff-notes, Kara!”

“Right,” Kara blushed. “Anyway, doesn’t matter. He wreaked havoc on the city, and wouldn’t let me leave, so I tricked him into saying his name backward and he was sent back to his dimension. I thought that was all. Spoiler alert, it wasn’t.”

“Will you get to the point already?” Lex said, irritated.

“Right, well, Mxy came back a couple of weeks ago, claiming he needed to redeem himself or something. So, he ehm,” Kara shot Lena a nervous look, “offered to do me a favor.”

“What favor?” Lena asked icily.

“Well,” Kara shuffled awkwardly on her feet, “he saw that I was a little, ehm, down? After our fall-out.”

She motioned between the two of them.

Lena merely raised an eyebrow. Unimpressed.

“So?”

“Well, he, ehm, offered to show me what life would have been like if things had gone differently.”

“Different how?”

Lena’s voice was so cold it even made Kara’s impenetrable skin break out in goosebumps

Kara swallowed. “Like, if I’d told you my secret earlier?”

Lena quieted down for just a second, and Kara braced herself for impact.

“You let a fifth-dimensional genie grant you wishes?” she asked softly.

“Trickster,” Kara bit her lip. “But essentially, maybe, yes?”

Lena scoffed.

“Unbelievable.”

“Lena – ”

“Actually, you know what? It’s not unbelievable, no. Because you – ”

She pointed a finger accusingly at Kara.

“ – always try to take the easy way out of any situation! Kept a gigantic secret from your best friend for five years? Tell her when she’s about to appear in front of cameras and can’t ever afford to break down or get angry!” Lena yelled. “Got into a fight with said best friend? Oh,” Lena mocked, “I’ll have someone else rectify it for me so I won’t have to deal with the consequences of my own actions!”

Kara bit her lip.

“Let me guess,” Lena scoffed. “It didn’t work out and you screwed everything up.”

“Okay, calm the fuck down, Luthor,” Alex interrupted. “You’ve made more stupid mistakes this week than Kara has made all year. You have no right to play a saint now.”

Lena clenched her jaw.

“I suggest you let her explain before _your_ evil doppelgänger figures out where we are.”

Lena looked furious, but she didn’t say anything, which Kara assumed meant she had the floor again.

“I mean, Lena wasn't exactly wrong,” Kara said nervously. “A lot of things went south.”

Lena shot a triumphant look Alex’s way, which Alex pointedly ignored.

“When I told Lena I was Supergirl right before Mercy attacked, I ended up dying,” Kara said quickly, trying not to look at her sister. “When I told Lena in the midst of the whole Reign thing, she ended up dying. Then, when I finally did it right, when I told Lena early on, and she and I became friends, things took a turn for the worst, and everyone else ended up dying.”

She held their attention now. Alex looked taken aback, seeing as Kara had never given her all the details on what exactly happened to them in alternate universes, just that it was bad. Lena’s face was icy, tight, unaffected, but her eyes sparkled with something akin to worry. Lex just looked grotesquely intrigued.

“Long story short, I just told Mxy that maybe Lena would be better off if she’d just… never met me,” Kara said softly.

She heard Lena take an almost imperceptible breath. Her heart was beating just a tad faster.

“And?” Lex asked impatiently.

“And it wasn’t better. If Lena had never met me, you would’ve killed her. Three years ago, remember that?” she added, glaring at Lex. “Remember how you sent those assassins after her? You were mad because she took your little company away from you?”

Evidently, it seemed to have faded in Lena’s mind too. The woman turned around to look at Lex like she’d never seen him before in her life.

“That’s right,” she said slowly. “You sent those robots after me, those machine guns. I almost crashed to the ground in that damned helicopter.”

“Well in that world, you did,” Kara said, and Lena’s head whipped around so she could look at Kara. 

She stared at Kara intensely.

A beat of silence.

“What happened?” she asked hoarsely.

“You didn’t die,” Kara said, fidgeting uncomfortably with her fingers. “Lillian found you. She – well she… do you remember Metallo?”

“John Corben?” Lena asked. “My mother’s henchman?”

“The one with the kryptonite heart,” Kara nodded.

“Of course I remember,” Lena muttered. “He nearly killed me. He was behind every single attack on my life. But what does he have to do with anything?”

Kara swallowed.

“Well, in that universe,” Kara explained carefully, “Lillian didn’t experiment on him. She didn’t give him a kryptonite core. She didn’t need to.”

“Why?” Lena asked.

“Because she gave you one,” Lex filled in the gaps, sounding way too mesmerized and interested for Kara’s tastes.

Lena looked from Lex to Kara in astonishment.

“No, she – ” Lena stopped herself. “It can’t – ”

She turned to Kara.

“Is that true?” she demanded, an edge in her voice. “Did I turn into some version of Metallo?”

Kara’s shoulders sagged.

“Yes,” she whispered. “She turned you into a weapon.”

“Oh God,” Lena said, dropping down on the couch.

Kara knew she had to tell Lena everything now, even if she was so upset. If she didn’t say it now, she never would, and she’d already seen how that turned out.

“The Lena – the Metallo version of you – she got really angry. She’d been tortured for years. When she came back to National City, she took over. She created HOPE robots that patrolled the streets and hunted aliens. The city was in ruins. She reigned with an iron fist. And, coincidentally, she had Reign by her side – ”

“I’m sorry Reign?! As in Sam?” Lena implored, almost hysterically.

“Yes,” Kara whispered regretfully, almost apologetically. “She was her right-hand woman.

Lena shook her head.

“I don’t know where she is now,” Kara explained hurriedly. “When Mxy tore me out of that reality, I wasn’t exactly aware of what everyone else was doing. I just remember that the team there was trying to stop Reign.”

“Oh God,” Lena whispered in her hands. “This can’t be real. It can’t be. This just can’t – ”

“Look, I know what it’s like to have an evil doppelgänger running around,” Kara tried, shooting one angry look at Lex. “We’ll fix this. We can fix this and then all will go back to norm – ”

They all startled when they heard raised voices in the hall. The voices sounded confused – resolute. Protesting.

Lena was there.

She’d figured out where they were. Of course she had. She’d worked in an exact copy of the building they were in. That meant she knew all the ins and outs too. Hiding would’ve been impossibly either way.

It sounded like Lex and Lena’s security teams were refusing to let her through. After all, they’d already seen one Lena Luthor enter the room. And the Other Lena was just a tad too different, to eerily distinct from the real Lena, nobody could deny that. Even someone who’d only ever seen Lena on TV could attest to that.

Other Lena was being stopped in her tracks.

“We don’t have time for this bickering,” Alex said tersely. “We have to leave.”

“I just need to get Mxy here,” Kara said. “He can put her back in her own reality.”

“Oh, we’re going to rely on the tricks and spells of a sex offender now are we?” Lena asked incredulously.

“He’s not a sex offender!” Kara countered.

“He tried to force you to marry him,” Lena arched her eyebrows. “That constitutes a sex-offender, and just an all-around horrible person in my book.”

“Look, he’s okay now,” Kara said quickly. “And we need his help.”

Lena shook her head.

“God, I’d forgotten how godawful you people are at making plans.”

“Our plans aren’t godawful!”

“Just sometimes,” Alex added.

Lena rolled her eyes.

“We just need to get him here,” Kara said pacing around the office. “We just need to – Mxy!” Kara exclaimed. “Mxy! Mxyzptlk! Mxyzptlk, we need you!”

Nothing happened.

Her cheeks heated up when she saw Lex and Lena exchange a look.

“I don’t know why he’s not coming,” Kara said awkwardly. “This usually works. Mxy! Mxy, this isn’t funny! Mxyzptlk, I need you!”

Not even a fifth-dimensional spark lit up in the room.

They were alone and helpless.

Lex sighed.

“How calm I feel knowing that the citizens of National City can rest easily at night knowing that this,” he gestured at Kara, “is the hero they can count on to protect them from harm and evil.”

“Hey!” Kara said angrily. “A lot of that harm and evil is caused by you, so screw you! This isn’t my fault!”

“Not your fault?” Lena said slowly. “Not your fault? If you hadn’t been incredibly, _imbecilically_ irresponsible enough to make that wish – ”

“I know that, okay?” Kara shouted frustratedly. “I did a stupid thing! But I couldn’t have known she would come here, so instead of pointing fingers, can we just _leave_?”

Lena clenched her jaw and shut her eyes for one tense second before she calmed herself down.

“Okay,” she said shaking her head. “Fine,” she spat, “fair enough. Where is she now?”

Kara focused her ears.

“Still in the hallway,” she said decisively. “Your security team isn’t letting her through.”

“But you don’t think they’ll be able to stop her?” Lena asked worriedly.

Kara shook her head. “They don’t stand a chance. My powers are useless against her, so I can’t protect anyone right now.”

“Then – ”

Other Lena raised her voice in the hallway and this time it was loud enough to reach everyone in the room.

The Other Lena was starting to sound annoyed, threatening. She wanted to be shown through the door, and she wouldn’t stop until she was inside. Those security teams were an annoyance, a hindrance at most.

Other Lena had probably dealt with enough hindrances taking over National City. Kara doubted she would let a few security people stand in her way of vengeance now.

“This isn’t good, you guys, we have to leave!” Kara said.

“No!” Lex said, a disgustingly excited glint in his eyes. “Let her come. I feel like she and I have a lot to talk about.”

“Are you insane?” Kara exclaimed. “You don’t know who that is, but I promise you, she’s nothing like the Lena you know.”

Lex didn’t spare his sister a glance.

“Would that be such a terrible thing?”

Behind Lex, Kara could see Lena snap her head up in disbelief.

“Lex,” Kara said hurriedly, stepping closer to the hateful, spiteful, downright vindictive _asshat_ of a man. “I get that we don’t get along, believe me, I don’t even think we should. But one minor detail I forgot to mention? Lena killed her Lex. And Lillian. She doesn’t have the same scruples about murder as our Lena.”

“Our Lena? That seems a bit rich, don’t you think?” Lex asked, but he did seem at least a tad perturbed.

“Well,” he shook his head. “This Lena tried to kill me too, and we still get along splendidly.”

Lena rolled her eyes.

“Guys,” Kara said, but they were interrupted by a short storm of screams and gunfire in the hall. It was silenced as soon as it had sprung up. 

They all shot up from their places.

From the sound of it, those couldn’t have been warning shots.

“Oh my God,” Lena said, clasping a hand in front of her mouth. “Oh my God.”

“We might need to put out some job applications for a new security team,” Lex said dryly, but his face was white and tense. 

“I – I should go help. I should – right?” Alex mumbled, almost catatonically. She was pale, she was afraid. “We – I – ”

“There’s nothing we can do,” Lena whispered. “Not if she’s singlehandedly capable of attacking my security team.”

“We need to leave now!” Kara intervened. “She’s going to be here any second!”

“And then we do what?” Lex demanded. “Outrun her? Leave LuthorCorp for her to take over? I thought you were a fighter, Supergirl. Don’t tell me the big, powerful alien is afraid of our little Lena?” he mocked.

Kara felt everybody’s eyes on her and she clenched her jaw in a suppressed furor.

“I know who I am. I know exactly how powerful I am,” she hissed. “I fight when it’s useful and _necessary_. And I am telling you right now, this is not a fight I can win! You don’t know who you’re dealing with, Lex, but I do! She’s dangerous!”

“How dangerous can she be?” Lex scoffed. “She doesn’t have her little army with her.”

“She killed me!” Kara yelled. “She killed me, that’s how powerful she is! That’s how dangerous she really is!”

Her statement was followed by a deafening quiet.

So quiet, in fact, that Kara almost immediately regretted her words.

“Y-you died?” Alex was the first to speak up.

“She killed you?” Lena almost whispered. “I – she killed you?”

Kara opened her mouth, wishing she could say anything to make it better, but she was interrupted by Alex before she could utter a word.

“Lena killed you?”

“It wasn’t – ”

“Why didn’t you tell me?” Alex asked, almost hurt. “Why didn’t you say anything?”

“I didn’t think it mattered,” Kara whispered. “Alex – ”

“Didn’t matter?” Alex asked disbelievingly. “Kara, someone killed you! Someone hurt you, and her doppelgänger is someone we talk to on a daily basis, and you didn’t think that was something I needed to know?”

“Oh, trouble in the Danvers household,” Lex muttered.

“Shut up!” both Kara and Alex yelled at the same time.

Lex raised his eyebrows but didn’t interrupt.

Alex turned back towards Kara, furious.

“If someone hurts you, Kara, it is my business,” she spat. “When someone kills you, you tell me!”

“Alex – ”

“No, Kara!” Alex snapped. “That is not something you keep from me! Especially if the threat is still out there!”

“The threat was supposed to be a hypothetical!” Kara shouted. “Why doesn’t anyone get that?! She wasn’t even real! How was I supposed to know she’d come back to finish the job? How was I supposed to know – ”

The gunfire in the hallway fired up again – this time a whole lot closer to them than Kara liked.

The Other Lena had lost her patience. She was done playing nice.

“This isn’t a discussion anymore,” Kara said tensely. “You all need to leave right now.”

“I’ve already told you that I don’t plan on leaving, Supergirl,” Lex said. “Someone needs to be here to deal with your mistakes.”

“I’m not letting her roam this city any longer,” Alex said decisively. “I’m not letting her get to you again.”

“Guys!” Kara exclaimed desperately. “This isn’t a discussion. She’s dangerous!”

Alex cocked her gun. “Which is exactly why we need to take care of business right now.”

“What do you mean?” Kara said wearily, eying the gun worriedly. “Alex?”

“That isn’t our Lena,” Alex said, not looking at Kara. “If she’s as dangerous as you say she is, we have to deal with the problem head-on.”

“Alex… what – ”

“Oh of course your first impulse is to kill her,” Lena scoffed. “Doesn’t that sound familiar. Don’t have a bomb, use the gun. Whatever’s available, right?”

“Listen, Luthor,” Alex snapped. “When you and your little family decide not to hurt my sister or this city again, I’ll be happy to stay as far away from you as humanly possible for the rest of my fucking life. Unfortunately, every single version of you seems to be hell-bent on making my life a little harder, so,” she checked the magazine of her gun, “I make the tough calls.”

“Alex!” Kara interjected. “You can’t be serious! We can’t shoot her! That’s insane!”

“Kara, that woman on the other end of the door is evil. You said so yourself."

“It’s Lena!” Kara countered. “It’s Lena! Our friend, remember?”

Alex glanced over at Lena before looking back at Kara.

“How well did that last one work out, huh?”

Kara let her mouth fall shut.

After a beat, she whispered, “That’s not the same, and you know it.”

The sounds on the other end of the door grew louder, more desperate.

“I won’t let you kill her,” Kara said.

But Alex ignored her, her agent instinct rising up.

“Alright, everybody, get behind me,” Alex ordered. “Kara, you cover me. Lex, Lena, behind the desk.”

They all shuffled through the room, getting close to the balcony should they have to escape.

When they were all in position, Alex raised her gun and pointed it at the door. Her hand was steady, strong. She’d already done this a million times over and she was ready to do it again.

She was picturing Lena as just another target, and Kara wouldn’t have that.

“I won’t let you hurt her,” Kara said forcibly. “I don’t care that she’s not _our_ Lena. We’re not killers. And we definitely don’t kill people that are good. People who still stand a chance.”

Alex scoffed and shook her head.

“You’ve always been blind when it comes to her.”

Kara blushed when she felt Lena’s eyes on her.

“And you’ve always been quick to dismiss an entire friendship over a moment of doubt,” Kara bit back.

Alex rolled her eyes but didn’t reply.

“She’s not evil, Alex,” Kara added softly, a desperate edge in her tone. “She’s misguided, she’s scared – I, I know that. But she’s _not_ evil,” Kara stressed.

Alex clenched her jaw.

The slight glistening on her forehead was indication enough that she was at least taking the discussion seriously. Alex may be the strongest, coolest, most badass agent there was, Kara knew she also had a heart.

No matter what she may have claimed earlier on, Kara knew Alex wouldn’t just disregard Kara’s feelings on the matter. And she wouldn’t be able to shoot Lena as easily as she claimed she could.

Kara remembered all the times Lena and Alex had spent laughing on the couch, bonding over whiskey and their love for Kara. She remembered how Alex had drunkenly admitted that Lena was the best friend Kara had ever had, and the one she could stand the best. She remembered how Lena had come over when Maggie and Alex had broken up, and Alex needed emotional support in the form of many, many girls’ nights.

And from the tense look in Alex’s eyes, Alex remembered that too.

She was wondering whether she’d be capable of killing Lena’s copy too. It was the only thing that reassured Kara just a little, in the face of the upcoming attack.

The noises in front of the door swelled for a second more, the gunfire escalating, the screams getting more desperate… before they suddenly, all at once, ceased.

The overwhelmingly loud gunfire, the screams, the yelling… it all stopped. The hallway was dead quiet.

They were in it now.

The noises in the hallway had done an excellent job hiding Lena’s presence. They had all masked the subtleness that was Lena Luthor. Now that the noises had died down, Kara could hear the click-clack of the woman’s high heels on the tiles clearly, just inches away from the door.

The heels paused.

“Is the door locked?” Kara whispered.

“Yes,” Lex said. “It’s a bionic code, we installed it just two weeks ago. It would require a thumbprint, an eye-scan and so – ”

“And so she would have immediate access,” Alex hissed.

Lex seemed to realize that too.

“Right. Well,” he grumbled, “we didn’t exactly take doppelgängers into account when we installed the lock.”

“Clearly,” Alex said dryly.

“For a guy who loves doppelgängers so much, you’re woefully unprepared when one actually shows up,” Kara snapped back.

Lex rolled his eyes, but Kara couldn’t focus on that for more than a second, because she heard a light tapping on the door. Someone was fidgeting with the lock.

Kara tensed up, focusing all her senses, preparing herself for the inevitable shock that would come seeing that woman again. The distorted mirror of her best friend.

“Okay,” Kara whispered quickly, “if we all – ”

She didn’t get to finish her sentence, because with a swift and loud _boom_ , the door was blown open.

And Lena Luthor stepped into the room.


	2. Chapter 2

The worst part was how normal she seemed. How Lena-like she seemed.

However horrible the accident must have been, it hadn’t left a trace on Lena’s face. There were no scars, no disfigured features, nothing.

She looked exactly like the Lena Kara had always known and loved, though Kara knew most of the trauma was not visible with the naked eye. Lena’s flawless appearance was deceptive. Underneath it all, she was kept together by steel, metal, kryptonite, and deep-seated hatred.

Lena’s steps were measured, careful. She walked into the room with a certain elegance Kara herself could never muster. She walked with grace, but above all, with power. She stepped into the office like it was undisputedly hers. Like everyone should jump aside for her, and not the other way around.

The last time Kara had seen her, Lena had radiated anger, furor, and hate. She’d seemed unhinged, desperate for Kara to die – as if it would somehow undo the years of damage her mother had bestowed on her.

She looked calm now. Satisfied, maybe. Kara couldn’t really tell. She mostly seemed like nothing could deter her.

Others would have flinched or panicked at the sight of a gun pointed right at their face, but not Lena. It seemed like she barely even noticed.

She came to a halt a few steps before Alex and Kara.

She observed the room calmly, noting the sunlight beaming through the windows from outside, casting the room in a golden glow. She noted the four tense people in the room, and a flicker of something that could be called a smile passed over her lips.

“Well,” she said softly, “that was quite the welcome.”

“Jesus Christ,” Alex muttered.

She probably couldn’t believe her eyes. Kara couldn’t either, the first time she saw Other Lena on that television screen in the other timeline. She almost thought it was a trick, because in no universe, in no way, in no possible imagined timeline, could Lena Luthor – her Lena Luthor, good Lena Luthor, philanthropist all-around hero Lena Luthor – possibly, ever be so cold and evil. It just wasn’t possible. Or rather, Kara didn’t want to believe it to be possible.

It was only after Kara had already gone too far, and gotten too close that she realized how horrifically real the Other Lena really was.

And now she was here. Standing not too far from her. Looking beautiful, and kind, and _sane_.

Maybe it was easier when it was Reign, Kara mused. Because Sam looked sweet, and Sam was kind, and Reign dressed and spoke just like any other villain Kara had already faced. It was easier to distinguish between the person she wanted to help, and the monster she had to defeat.

But what if Other Lena was both? What if Other Lena was both those entities in one body, with no way of knowing which parts were salvageable, and which parts had to be destroyed? What if her body was Sam, so to speak, and her mind was Reign. Then how could Kara ever fight her?

Alex didn’t seem to have that problem.

Her fingers were stark white against the dark material of her gun. Her eyes had widened considerably at her first good look at the Other Lena, but she hadn’t let it deter her. Kara couldn’t even guess what was going through her head then, but something must’ve been pictured in her mind for her to be able to keep her gun pointed at Lena without so much a hint of a tremble.

She was laser-focused.

Behind her, Kara could hear Lena’s breath get stuck in her throat. She couldn’t blame her. Other Lena was terrifying. And to see your own evil, distorted face looking back at you… it wasn’t an experience Kara wished on anyone.

She didn’t tell anyone, but Overgirl still showed up in her nightmares from time to time. Gleaming at her with her wicked smirk and cold, merciless eyes. Waiting in the back of her mind, just… waiting. Biding her time. Patiently. Waiting for Kara to come around to her way of thinking. Waiting for her to mess up, to dry up, to lose the love she held for the world. Waiting for her to snap and turn into the type of monsters she so frequently arrested.

Kara shook the thought away.

Overgirl didn’t deserve the pleasure nor the courtesy of occupying even the tiniest part of Kara’s mind. She was dead and gone, and Kara was Kara, and not Overgirl. Just like Lena was Lena. And Evil Lena, well… Kara hadn’t figured that out yet.

Other Lena’s eyes were still drifting over the room, pausing intermittently to look curiously at an item or two, before her eyes drifted again. She seemed patient, curious at best. It made everyone in the room nervous. No one dared to open their mouth. Instead, all of them seemed to gape at her, waiting for her to make the first move.

Kara decided that she couldn’t allow Other Lena to act first, because as she’d seen with Mxy, her first move might just be a homicide.

She took a deep, quick breath.

“Lena,” Kara said instead, seriously, forgoing any small talk. Forceful, like a leader. Not a girl about to cry because her best friend had been mean to her and now they had to talk it out. “What are you doing here?”

Other Lena’s eyes snapped to Kara’s face and narrowed.

“Supergirl,” she purred.

She ignored Kara’s question entirely.

“Or,” she tilted her head, “ _Kara_. Isn’t that what you said last time we spoke?”

“You gave a supervillain your name?” Alex hissed.

“Well I thought it'd be easier to avoid the part where she hates me for not telling her my name altogether!” Kara whisper-yelled.

“You and I are going to have a serious conversation about this when we get home,” Alex snapped, and Kara sighed.

Lena, the new one that is, looked amused, for her part. She observed their bickering with calculating eyes, not moving to do anything just yet.

“Look,” Kara shook her head, “why are you here? What do you want?”

Other Lena’s smile grew a little colder.

“Can’t you guess, _Kara_?” she asked. “I thought I was very clear last time we spoke.”

Kara tensed up.

“I can’t think of any reason for you to be here, but I think we can get you home a lot quicker if you just start telling us why you’re here.”

“Very well,” Other Lena said. “I am a strong believer in efficacy.”

Her tone was so lighthearted it made Kara want to turn around to check if her Lena was really still standing behind her. It sounded so familiar, so much like something her Lena would say.

“I want what I was denied a little while ago,” Other Lena said, staring straight into Kara’s eyes. “You and I have unfinished business.”

Kara felt a chill run down her spine.

“You did finish your job. You banned me from your world. You get rid of me. You’re done,” Kara said tensely. 

Other Lena laughed softly.

“If only it were that easy,” she whispered, taking a step closer to Kara.

Alex moved to stand half in front of Kara, so she could shield her if necessary. It didn’t perturb the Other Lena, who barely glanced in the other Danvers’s direction.

“It is that easy,” Kara insisted. “I have no plans of going to your world ever again. You’re rid of me. I promise.”

“And I promised you, you would die screaming,” she said softly. “We both know I only partially got what I wanted. And,” she tilted her head, “I tend to keep my promises.”

Kara looked bit her lip and looked around desperately, eyes flickering to Alex nervously.

“I almost died,” she said, a hint of desperation in her voice, “isn’t that enough? You made me suffer, believe me. You got what you wanted! That has to be enough!”

The corners of Other Lena’s mouth quirked up for a second before they were down in a grimace again. “I think we both know it isn’t.”

“Lena – ”

“Alright,” Lex cut in, pulling Kara out of her Lena-invoked trance, startling her. “That’s more than enough from you, Supergirl. Lena dear,” Lex said jovially.

Other Lena kept her eyes locked with Kara’s for a second longer before she – almost regretfully – tore her eyes away from Kara to turn and look at her brother.

“Lex,” she said icily. “It’s been a while.”

“So I’ve heard,” Lex quipped. “I must say, you look good, sister of mine. I always said black suited you.”

“You did,” Lena replied. “You always said my black dresses would be the downfall to many a man.”

Lex smiled – and Kara could just see the underlying smirk. He thought he had the whole thing in his basket. He thought he’d won already.

“They certainly are.”

“Do you remember when you told me that?”

“The thing about the black dresses?” Lex’s eyebrows went up, a hint of surprise in his voice.

“Yes,” Other Lena smiled coldly. “Do you remember?”

“I can’t say that I do,” Lex laughed apologetically.

Other Lena’s smile tightened.

“Well, no surprise in that,” she said. “Your nostalgia never extended further than your own egotistical aspirations. But let me refresh your memory.”

“Please."

“It was at father’s funeral,” Lena mused. “At his reception. We just lost him, we just put him in the ground, and I was standing there, distraught, and all you could say was that I looked pretty.”

Lex’s brows knitted together.

“Cause that was what I was to you,” Other Lena said simply. “Pretty.”

“I don’t – ”

“I lost the one parent who was occasionally kind to me. I lost the one man who actually celebrated me for having a brain – brash and unreasonable as he could be. And you disregarded my feelings entirely.”

“Lena,” Lex sighed.

“All you wanted to joke about was how pretty I was. And how many boys were pining over me as I was trying not to cry when his favorite music was being played in the salon,” Other Lena said coldly.

Kara almost held her breath.

“But then again,” Other Lena said, a smile tugging at the corners of her mouth, “it was so perfectly on-brand for you not to care about my feelings and emotions, and instead focusing on ways for me to exploit others.”

Kara and Alex exchanged a worried look.

“So," Other Lena mused, “I thought it was only poetic to wear one when I killed you. For old times’ sake. You understand.”

Lex stiffened, and Other Lena smirked.

“What?” she asked innocently. “Too harsh?”

“Not at all,” Lex said, “just wasn’t expecting you to dive right into it. Seems you have a tendency of shooting your shots unexpectedly.”

“I’ve found it’s useless to spend time on conversations that don’t matter to me.”

Lex frowned. “And there wasn’t anything else you wanted to talk about with me besides my death? That’s just cruel, Lena."

“Oh Lex,” she sighed. “All my life you tried everything in your power to shut me up. Do you really deem yourself important and interesting enough for me to want to cross dimensions to visit you for small talk one last time?”

Lex opened his mouth, but Other Lena cut him off again.

“Silly question, of course you do. But I did not come here for you,” she said icily. “I feel no need to talk to you, I do not feel a need to think about you. I've already killed you. I have no more time or space left in my life to dedicate to the memory of you. I came here for one person and one person alone.”

“Mother?” Lex asked sarcastically.

Other Lena’s features tightened.

“She’s alive in this universe?”

“Very much so.”

Lena shook her head. “Of course she is. That old snake always had a way out of every situation she’s ever been in.”

“I heard she wasn’t so lucky on your world,” Lex commented.

A smile passed over Other Lena’s lips.

“No, I don’t suppose she was.”

Kara watched the exchange with big eyes. Her skin had broken out into goosebumps, and every cell of her body was screaming at her to get the hell out. Every passing second felt more and more like a danger she couldn’t yet see was inching closer, waiting to strike and kill.

“Heard she gave you an upgrade too,” Lex smiled. “Strong enough to kill even a Super.”

Other Lena paused.

“Yes,” she said eventually. “And I had her pay dearly for it as well.”

“Is that so?”

Lena smiled fully now, but it didn’t reach her eyes and gave her the impression of some sort of soulless robot, a very daring but ultimately failed attempt at a copy of the real Lena.

“She screamed so loud when she saw me coming,” Lena reminisced. “She’d been expecting me, you see. She’d hid away, thinking I wouldn’t find her. But I knew. I let her know that I knew.”

Kara felt a chill run down her spine at Lena’s cold recollection of the situation. There was certainly no love lost between Kara and Lillian, but even she felt queasy just imagining the horror on Lillian’s face when she knew her daughter was coming for her.

“I let her wallow in that fear for months,” Lena said, eyes untrained, like she was recalling all of it like a fond, old memory. “I sent her bits of your things to let her know that I knew where she was. I let her move, time and time again, and every time,” she smiled. “Every time I found her again.”

Other Lena shook her head and looked at Lex.

“I will enjoy killing you again,” she said matter-of-factly. “And I will enjoy killing mother again even more, but – ”

She turned to Kara and the deep-seated hatred Kara had seen before – when Lena had been about to blast Kara into oblivion – returned.

“I will enjoy killing you most of all. And this time,” she promised, “this time I’ll make sure you stay dead.”

“Lena, just calm down,” Kara said, putting up her hands. “Let’s talk about this.”

“I don’t want to talk,” Other Lena said, taking a step closer. “I’ve been waiting too damn long for this.”

“Lena, you don’t even know me! You’ve never even – I’m sorry, okay?” Kara said desperately. “I’m sorry for everything that’s ever happened to you! It was unfair, and it was not okay, and you have every right to be angry.”

“Can’t you let it go?” Alex cut in. “From what I heard, you got your shot. You've hurt her enough!”

The corner of Other Lena’s mouth twitched upwards, as she kept her eyes locked on Kara.

“It wasn’t enough. It won’t _ever_ be enough.”

“Lena, come on,” Kara pleaded. “I don’t want to hurt you. You’re my friend – I – ”

“Don’t talk to me like you know me!” Other Lena snapped angrily. “You don’t know the first thing about me!”

“But I do know you!” Kara argued. “You’re Lena! I know you, Lena. I know every little thing there is to know about you!”

“No you don’t!”

“Yes I do!” Kara argued. “Like, ehm – oh! I know you wear fuzzy socks at night because your feet are always cold. You never get scared watching horror movies, but you watch them to see how fast you can figure out the plot to the rest of the movie ahead of time. I know you!”

Lena looked furious, but she didn’t interrupt her. So Kara kept going like her life depended on it. Which it probably did.

“You’ve been drinking scotch since you were sixteen. Andrea taught you to enjoy it. But you secretly enjoy banana chocolate milkshakes just a little more, and would take one over whiskey every time.”

Lena clenched her jaw.

“You love dogs and puppies, and you resent Lillian for never letting you have any growing up. You can’t have them with your busy schedule, so you pet every dog you see and they make you smile the brightest,” Kara said, tears jumping in her eyes.

“Your Achilles heel is betrayal,” Kara rattled. “You’ve been hurt so many times, but you always come out the other end stronger and wiser. You love openly and enthusiastically, and you would go to the edge of the world for your loved ones.”

Lena balled her fists.

“You fenced in high school. You prefer being in the lab over being at your desk. You’re not afraid of spiders, but scorpions creep you out. You hate salmon. You drink too much coffee, and you never take sugar in it – which is disgusting. You love donuts and big belly burger. Your favorite flowers are – ”

“Stop it!” Other Lena yelled. “Just stop!”

Kara held her breath.

Then, Other Lena continued in a much lower and more threatening voice.

“You think that by enumerating a couple of facts you could’ve found in any interview could what? Persuade me from doing what I came here to do? Change my mind? Make me not want to kill you?”

“Lena – ”

“You think,” Other Lena threatened, “that you know me? You don’t know what you know, superhero,” she said inching closer, paying no mind to Alex’s hold tightening on the gun. “You don’t know me at all!”

“Yes I do! You’re my best friend!”

“My friend?” Other Lena sneered. “I don’t have friends, but if I did, they wouldn’t leave me to rot while I got tortured!”

“Lena – ”

“You aren’t my friend,” Other Lena hissed. “You are nothing but a person who did absolutely nothing when I was being hurt over and over again. You're a false icon. You fly through the sky and you let yourself be revered like some sort of God when we both know that's a lie. You're a fraud. You are _nothing._ You think you know me based on what?” she scoffed. “Based on the little coward behind the desk that happens to look like me?”

Now it was Kara’s turn to get angry. She balled her fists.

“She’s not a coward,” Kara said indignantly.

“Oh, isn’t she now? She’s doing a great job in proving the contrary.”

She tilted her head towards the desk.

“Come out now, Lena. I know you’re curious. Or are you too scared?”

Kara clenched her eyes shut the moment she heard Lena’s heart beat faster. Of course the woman wouldn’t let that insult pass. She cursed Lena’s foolish bravery. How much trouble had it gotten her into over the years, and how much more trouble would it take for her to stop? With Lena's stubbornness, Kara doubted it would end peacefully. 

She could hear Lena stand up straighter, squaring her shoulders, bracing herself against the other woman.

“There you are,” the Other Lena smiled.

“Here I am,” Lena said, crossing her arms.

The Other Lena looked her up and down with something akin to disgust.

“You own this company?” 

“I share the business with Lex,” Lena said, chin tilted upward in her best hotshot, business shark-CEO look.

“Well,” Other Lena arched her eyebrows, an amused smirk playing around her lips. “It’s cute you want to keep it in the family.”

Lena’s jaw clenched.

“And you have a little superhero at your beck and call?” she said, almost sounding impressed. “That is a mighty feat.”

“She’s not my superhero,” Lena spat out, and Kara flinched. “She’s merely active in the same city and works for one of LuthorCorp’s branches.”

Other Lena’s eyes flickered between Lena and Kara.

“I see,” she drawled. “And let me guess. She did save you from the crash.”

“She did,” Lena replied, crossing her arms.

The Other Lena tried to smile, but the anger transformed it into an unwitting snarl.

Her eyes shot from Lena to Kara.

“So why her?” Other Lena asked Kara. “There seems to be little love between you two. So why her, little superhero? Why her. Why save her and not me?”

Kara sighed.

“Look, it wasn’t – ”

“We were the same!” Other Lena lashed out. “Why was my life not important, and hers was? Why save her and not me?”

“It wasn’t my intention!” Kara yelled back. “I thought I was helping you.”

“Helping me?” Other Lena asked, slowly raising her voice. “Helping me? Were you helping me when my bones were shattered in a million different places? Were you helping me when my mother’s hands were writhing inside of me, trying to break me apart and put me back together like some sort of sick puppet?”

Kara flinched.

“Were you helping me,” Other Lena asked, hysteria creeping into her voice, “when she cut out my heart and replaced it with kryptonite?”

“Lena – ”

“Stop saying my name!” she yelled. “You have no right! You ruined my life!”

“I didn’t ruin your life!” Kara snapped. “I didn’t do it on purpose! I wasn’t the one who shot you out of the sky, okay? I wasn’t the one who dragged you to a lair and performed experiments on you. I wasn’t the one who cut you open! That was all Lillian!”

Lena looked furious.

“I have saved a lot of people,” Kara said, trying to sound calmer than she felt, trying to diffuse the situation the best she could. “So many. But I’ve also failed to save a whole bunch more, you know why?”

She didn’t wait for the Other Lena’s snarl to turn into an answer.

“Because I can’t be everywhere at once. I’m sorry I couldn’t save you, Lena. I truly am.” Kara shook her head. “You have a right to hate me for not being there, but I do not deserve to be grouped in with the people who did this to you. So why are you so hard on me, when my only mistake was not being at the right place at the right time?”

“Why weren’t you there for me?” Other Lena asked cuttingly. “Explain it to me.”

Kara sighed and dropped her shoulders, the emotional exhaustion almost weighing heavier than the fear. 

How could she possibly explain?

“I thought – I thought you’d be better off if you’d never met me,” she sighed. “I thought you’d be happier. I wanted to make life easier for you, I really did. So I made a wish. To change things, to make things better for you! I just thought… I just wanted to see what would happen.”

“And you got me,” Other Lena finished the sentence for her.

“Yes,” Kara admitted softly. “I didn’t know what was going to happen. You were just the byproduct of a stupid, silly wish. And I’m sorry. I truly, truly am, Lena.”

She had to cover her mouth to suppress the dry sob that almost came out.

“I’m so sorry, Lena,” she whispered, forcing down the tears that wanted to jump in her eyes. “I just wanted to make things better for you. And it all just… it all went wrong.”

A silence followed her words.

Kara couldn’t bring herself to turn around and look at Lena. She was too afraid. She didn’t want to imagine the horror and anger on her face. Maybe she’d hate her too. Just a bit more than she did just hours before.

Maybe she’d rethink the whole “peace thing” too.

The Other Lena seemed to mull the words over in her head. Slowly, she cast her eyes up to look at Kara again. 

“You messed up,” she whispered softly. “You messed up, and I got hurt because of it.”

“I – yes,” Kara croaked out, her voice trembling from the tremendous efforts it took to hold down her tears. “Yes, but I didn’t mean for that to happen. I didn’t think – I didn’t know – ”

“Didn’t think is right,” Other Lena said tersely.

“I didn’t know Lillian would ever do that, Lena,” Kara pleaded. “I didn’t think you could change and – ”

“Change how?” Other Lena snapped.

“I didn’t think it would get that far,” Kara whispered tearfully. “I really didn’t. I wish I could change things for you but – ”

“But instead you ruined my life,” she finished softly.

“I didn’t hurt you, Lena. That was your mother,” Kara warned softly, but Lena wasn’t listening to her anymore. Kara should have known it wouldn’t have mattered what she said.

The Other Lena was hellbent on killing her, and she wouldn’t stop soon.

“You’re no superhero,” she muttered softly, the threat almost palpable in the room. “You don’t deserve the title. You didn’t rescue me. Not for the two _years_ I spent with her!” Other Lena screamed.

It was so sudden that everyone in the room tensed up, while Kara almost physically recoiled like she’d been slapped in the face.

“You failed,” Other Lena whispered lowly, threateningly. “You failed me, you failed my city, and you failed for the last time.”

Kara’s eyes widened when the Other Lena’s hand moved to the top of her suit jacket, the only thing Kara knew could contain the blazing poison within her. A flicker of green illuminated her chin.

“You will suffer, _Kara_ ,” Lena whispered, almost reverently. “And I will relish in every second of it.”

“No!” Lena yelled.

Alex cocked her gun. Lex took a step back as if a bomb were to go off, but Kara was faster than all of them.

She didn’t think, she didn’t ponder. She just did. That’s what she did best.

She still had her superspeed, and she would use it to her advantage.

In less than a second she’d crossed the distance between her and Other Lena, already feeling sick and nauseated from the trace amounts of kryptonite being exposed to the air. A glimmer of green reverberated in the air next to Lena’s neck.

She had to be fast, faster, because a second of hesitation and her momentum would be gone, her powers extinguished, and her hope of survival – dead.

Kara did the only thing she could think of to keep the kryptonite core covered.

She saw the alarm in Other Lena’s eyes, heard Alex’s desperate scream, heard the trembling of Alex’s thumb against the trigger…

And then she collided with Lena Luthor. She wrapped her arms around the other woman so tight, it trapped Lena’s hand against her chest, and prevented her from opening the suit.

Her entire body stuck to Lena’s, forcing the poison back into its cage.

She’d effectively contained Lena Luthor.

In a hug.

* * *

“Let. Go. Of. Me. This. Instance,” Other Lena threatened softly.

Her body was stock-still against Kara’s. Completely rigid. She didn’t fight the embrace, but maybe she was just too shocked and revolted to act on it.

“Ehm,” Kara said, awkwardly holding Other Lena to her chest, “yeah, I can’t really do that?”

“You will release me, and you will do it now!” Lena screamed.

Kara could feel the Other Lena’s heart race underneath the thin layers separating them. The woman was pulsating anger, and Kara didn’t know what to do.

She’d never actually had to hug someone who hated her with every fiber of her being.

Well, Eliza had made Alex hug her after she broke Kara’s NSYNC CD as revenge for Kara ripping her Joan Jett poster, and they were definitely close to hatred in that very moment, but still.

It didn’t really compare.

She could feel Lena’s angry breaths against her neck, the fingers of a clawed hand cramped up beside Lena’s body.

“You know,” Kara shook her head, “I swear I’m usually all about consent and personal space and all that, but I seriously can’t release you right now. I’m really, _really_ sorry.”

She felt Other Lena tense up when she moved her hands up a bit more on her back.

While she looked so icy cold and mean, her body was surprisingly warm and soft. Well, her suit was sharp and heavy and didn’t feel all that comfortable, but underneath all that, Lena’s form was still as soft as Kara remembered from hugging her Lena.

She _felt_ like her Lena.

From the softness of her hair against her cheek to the signature Chanel perfume Lena always wore to the knots in Other Lena’s shoulder caused by stress.

It was all _her_ Lena.

Her hair even smelled like the almond oil-based hair treatments her Lena always used.

It made it all very confusing.

Her tone, however, couldn’t be any more different if she tried.

“The audacity – I can’t even _believe_ you. The absolute _gall_ of – ”

“I swear this isn’t protocol,” Kara interrupted the hateful rant. “I promise this’ll be resolved in just a little while. Just, eh, hang tight!”

She cringed at her choice of words.

“Kara,” Alex said, her tone hesitating between apprehension and silent anger as if she hadn’t quite figured out how unbelievably angry she should get with her sister just yet. “What the hell did you just do?”

“Ehm – ”

“Kara!” Alex hissed. “What the hell were you thinking?”

“I wasn’t!”

“Well,” Alex said sarcastically, “ _that’s_ abundantly clear. What the hell, Kara?”

“Well, I didn’t exactly plan this, now did I?! I panicked!”

“If you don’t release me this _very_ instance, I swear to God – ”

“Look I’m really sorry,” Kara interrupted her, “but I can’t let you go. You’d just kill me.”

“They don’t have a word for what I’d do to you,” Lena growled threateningly.

Kara swallowed.

“Yep.”

“Well then what are we going to do with her, Kara?” Alex asked loudly. “You can’t hold her forever!”

“Well I detained her!” Kara exclaimed defensively. “I already did the hard part. Why do I have to think of everything? You think of something!”

“This is insane, Kara!” Alex exclaimed. “I swear to God, I will schedule a head scan of you when we get out of this. This trumps every stupid decision you’ve ever made! And there’s a wide array to choose from!”

Kara sighed exasperatedly.

“Maybe you should think of a solution instead of yelling at me!"

“Oh my suggestion is to have you locked up in a psych ward for a couple of days so they can figure out what the hell goes on in that blonde alien head of yours!”

“Not helping,” Kara grumbled with flushing cheeks.

“We should have her locked up,” Lena suddenly spoke up from behind Lex.

Her tone was ice cold.

It almost scared Kara.

Kara couldn’t see her face – she didn’t dare move a muscle while she was holding a ticking time-bomb – but the tone in her voice alone sent tingles down her spine.

“She’s a menace. She’s dangerous. She should be kept away from the public.”

Lena scoffed in Kara’s arms.

“You call me a menace? I’ve done more for my city than you will ever achieve in your lifetime.”

Her words lost a bit of their power, being muffled by Kara’s blonde hair.

“From what Kara told me, you basically led a police state. I’d hardly call that progress.”

“That’s because you don’t know what’s good for you and your citizens,” Lena snarled. “You’re weak. You’re too scared to take control, to take the power that belongs to you. Someone has to take over. Someone has to rule. For the good of humanity. I took on that burden.”

“Well isn’t that nice,” Alex said sarcastically. “I agree with sane Lena. Let’s lock her up in the D.E.O.”

“But shouldn’t we send her back to her world?” Kara asked. “You know, ethically speaking? She doesn’t belong here, in this world. She belongs in her own universe.”

The tip of her nose began to itch, and Kara shook her head a little to try and get rid of it.

“Will you stop moving?” Lena bit. “It’s bad enough that you’re stuck to me, I don’t need to feel your face against my hair.”

Kara blushed to her ears.

“My nose was itchy,” she said defensively.

“Well then,” Lena said sweetly. “Why don’t you let me go, and you don’t have to be uncomfortable anymore.”

“You know,” Kara said, “I would, I really would, but I just don’t trust you not to kill me when I do.”

“Promise I won’t?”

“You know what, I really usually am a real Lena Luthor believer, I swear, and it might not seem that way now, but I really, really am. Except, right now, I really don’t trust anything you say.”

“God, I want to kill you,” Lena huffed out in frustration.

“That I believe a bit more,” Kara amended.

“This is insane,” Alex threw her hands up. “We should stop bickering over this and lock this bitch up.”

“This bitch,” Lena spat out, “will end you. Mark my words, _agent_. The second I get out of here I’ll burn you all.”

Lex chuckled.

“Well,” he turned to his sister, “you two do share the same flair for the dramatics.”

Lena rolled her eyes.

“That’ll be the only thing we’ve got in common,” she said dryly.

“We should send her back to her world,” Kara repeated. “We can’t lock her away in a cage for the rest of her life? That’s horrible!”

“Did you forget the part where she’s a murderer who intended to kill you?” Lena said. “I personally don’t feel great about that _copy_ walking around in any universe. No matter its origin.”

Kara sighed.

“It’s not up to us to lock her up in a universe that isn’t her own,” Kara argued. “It’s not fair.”

“It doesn’t matter whether you lock me up or set me free,” Other Lena suddenly spoke up. “You’ll have to let me go eventually. You can’t hold me forever.”

“You’re underestimating just how great I am at hugging people,” Kara shot back, but she knew Lena was right.

She couldn’t hold Lena forever. And the second Kara would let her go, Lena would have all the power she needed to destroy her.

From the worried look Alex shot her, her sister had realized that too.

“How about this,” Alex compromised. “We get her to the D.E.O. and lock her up temporarily, just as long as it takes us to figure out how to get her back home. What do you think?”

She looked at her sister.

“Is that acceptable?”

Kara thought it over.

“What do you think?” she asked the woman in her arms softly.

Lena stiffened after being addressed so directly.

“What do you care what I want,” she spat out. “You let me rot in my mother’s lair for two years but now you care about my fate?” she scoffed. “Give me a break.”

Kara sighed.

“Sure,” she said to the rest of the room. “Let’s do that.”

* * *

It was a hassle to get Other Lena to the D.E.O., that was for sure.

This was not a woman who was used to going down easy.

It took a lot of yelling, a lot of protesting from Other Lena once she figured out they were going to fly, and a lot of muscle control on Kara’s part to make sure Lena couldn’t open the jacket while they were on the move.

Not that Lena didn’t try her hardest.

Kara had to repeatedly press closer to Lena – with a lot of mumbled apologies – because Lena found it necessary to use every hint of distance between them to tug at the corner of her suit jacket, exposing Kara to tiny amounts of kryptonite. She sure as hell enjoyed that.

The flying wasn’t any easier.

The heightened stress and the inability to move made Lena even more vocal than before, and Kara’s suffered a string of beratement, insults and death threats.

Hearing them come from Lena’s mouth was harder than Kara had previously anticipated. It was hell. She forced herself not to listen, and to just get Lena where they had to go.

By the time they were actually at the D.E.O., Kara was exhausted.

Kara flew them both to the holding cells, where four agents – all having been warned and updated by Alex – were waiting for them.

Two of them came around to hold Lena’s suit jacket close, while the other opened up a cell, and one other agent grasped Lena by her shoulder.

“Okay, Supergirl,” one of them gruffed. “You can let her go now. We’ve got her.”

However, the moment Kara separated from Lena, a slight smirk appeared around the woman’s mouth.

It was like the world moved into slow motion.

Kara’s brain couldn’t catch up.

Lena was smirking, but her jacket was sealed. She was powerless, yet she looked like she’d just won the war. Something was terribly, terribly wrong. But Kara couldn’t see – she couldn’t comprehend what it was.

Kara realized a moment too late that Lena wasn’t trying to expose the Kryptonite. Her hands weren’t anywhere near the jacket, and even then – it was held closed by the agents standing behind her.

Kara realized with horror that what Lena was waiting for was the gap of time between Kara releasing her and the handcuffs coming up to bind her hands. She had precious seconds between the two, but seconds were all she needed.

All this time, Kara realized, Lena had just wanted to free the hand trapped between her and Kara’s bodies.

Lena’s hand fell to her pocket, and Kara’s eyes could only follow in terror as her body was still too slow to understand – to react to what was happening.

Lena pressed down on something – an almost imperceptibly tiny button inside her pocket, and suddenly two tiny robots flew into the air, and before the horrified eyes of Kara and the other agents, they instantly grew to their real sizes.

Two big HOPE robots casting larger than life shadows over the petrified agents were hovering above the ground, flanking Lena left and right.

Kara’s mouth opened slightly, eyes widening at the sight.

“You didn’t _really_ think I’d come unprepared, did you?” Lena smirked. “You weren’t really so stupid as to believe I would just go to another dimension unarmed, right?”

“I did wonder how you managed to get past all of those guards,” Kara swallowed, eyes trained on the robots hovering menacingly above the ground.

The guards quickly pulled up their guns, pointing them at the robots.

Kara wanted to tell them they probably wouldn’t be able to do anything against the titanium-reinforced exoskeletons of the robots, but from the sweat on their foreheads, Kara had an inkling they probably suspected the same thing.

Lena looked proudly at the two robots.

“Ingenious, aren’t they?” she said proudly. “I came up with the idea after watching the Atom in action. I noticed he brought his suit with him wherever he went. It had to fit inside his pocket.”

She shrugged.

“The rest was just child’s play.”

“Clearly,” Kara said hoarsely.

Lena’s smirk widened.

Kara exchanged a look with the guards, and they responded with an almost imperceptible nod.

With trained agility and quickness, they cocked the guns and pulled the triggers, but Lena was quicker.

“HOPE,” she called out, not tearing her eyes from Kara, “defend.”

The HOPE robots did just that. They immediately blocked Lena, shielding her from gunfire. They lifted their robotic arms, and blasters quickly came out to replace their hands. They shot some blinding light out of openings on their arms, and Kara heard the men scream next to her.

“No!” Kara shouted.

Lena ignored her.

The guns fell to the ground, and with horror, Kara saw how they’d completely melted down into unintelligible blocks of black molten metal. The agents were tending to their own scorched hands with screams and muttered curses. Their hands didn’t fare much better, and Kara noticed with disgust and anguish how the air started to smell like burned skin and flesh.

She looked at Lena in absolute horror.

“Lena – ” she whispered horrified.

“Now,” Lena tilted her head. “I do believe you and I had business to finish.”

She used her momentum to bring her hands up to her jacket and tug hard and fast at the corner. Faster than Kara had time to calm down and assess the situation. Faster than Kara could even think to react.

Kara looked at the distorted version of her very best friend, as she revealed her inevitable weapon.

“Lena, wait – ”

Kara barely had time to finish her sentence before the room lit up in a green glow, and the scorching, all-consuming, overwhelming sharp, familiar pain planted itself in her body.

Her legs wobbled, her skin felt like it was on fire… and Lena hadn’t even aimed at her yet.

Lena was smirking from across the room.

“I did promise I would make you scream,” she said.

Kara didn’t even realize she was screaming until Lena mocked her. The pain was so excruciating she hadn’t even had time to feel the burning of her throat, the protest in her vocal cords.

Her brain felt like it was melting.

Lena slowly strutted towards her, while the agents watched helplessly from behind the robots how their colleague was being tortured to death, clutching their useless hands.

Kara screamed when the pain became more intense, more cutting more insufferable as Lena pointed the green beam right at her. She fell to the ground, her legs unable to bear the pain anymore. Her body failed her, as every single one of her cells felt like they were being disintegrated on the spot.

“That’s right, Supergirl,” she said maniacally. “Scream for me.”

“Stop, stop,” Kara begged. “Please, Lena, stop!”

Lena’s face smoothed over.

“Beg me again.”

“Please, Lena,” Kara sobbed. “Please, it hurts!”

“Yes,” Lena hissed, taking a step closer to Kara until she was standing over the writhing form on the floor. “Yes it hurts. Now you feel what I feel every. Damn. Day.”

“Lena, please,” Kara pleaded. “You’re my friend.”

Lena sank down to kneel beside Kara, and Kara fought to get away from the pain that somehow got even _worse_. The beam was relentless and didn’t fade in intensity. It seemed to get stronger, worse, more powerful with Kara’s pain and screams.

Lena’s face was so close to her own.

Those familiar green-blue eyes where Kara could usually find love, comfort and safety, were now cold, with only a sparkle of satisfied glee shining through.

“I don’t have friends, Supergirl,” Lena said simply. “Your hope is misguided.”

Kara fought against the pain, fought against the urge to scream, to cry to shout her lungs were dry and empty.

“No, it’s not,” she choked out. “You’re Lena. You’re Lena, and I know this isn’t you. You’re my friend, and I won’t fight you. Ever.”

Lena snarled.

She raised her leg over Kara’s hips and sat down, effectively pinning Kara down to the ground.

Kara screamed as Lena pushed Kara’s arm down, leaning so close she could feel Lena’s breath on her face.

The pain was all-consuming. Kara couldn’t think, she couldn’t breathe – every breath felt like inhaling nails and fire. She felt like she was being run over by a bus, pulled apart by her limbs, skinned alive, drowned, pushed into hot, molten lava all at once.

She couldn’t take it.

She couldn’t take it.

She couldn’t –

“Please,” Kara cried. “Please!”

She couldn’t scream anymore, her body was too weak, too broken, too anguished.

Her cells were fighting their inevitable destruction, while her body was pleading with her brain to just black out, to go to sleep, to die, anything – if it could only silence this pain.

She begged her own body to faint. She begged to be put out of her misery.

“L-Len-a,” Kara choked.

Black spots were starting to obscure the edges of her sight. She could only see Lena’s hateful, yet strangely empty face as she drifted off into the next world. Her entire world had been reduced to Lena – just Lena.

She was going out, bested by a woman she loved so deeply. Bested by her own mistakes.

Lena’s red lips were pulled tightly into a cold smirk which slowly turned into an angry grimace. Either Kara’s suffering had diminished in the pleasure it had given her before, or Lena thought it was all going too quickly.

Kara blinked – each time slower than before.

Lena was still there, her eyes hovering over Kara’s face.

Those swirls of color and infinite depths.

Lena.

It must be rare to die looking at one’s biggest failure, Kara mused, slipping into the comfortable, softer, lighter darkness. She had hurt Lena, and now the consequences were there to punish her justly.

“Lena,” Kara whispered. “I – I’m s-sorry.”

She felt Lena’s hand let go of her arm, but she didn’t seem to possess the power to push Lena off her anymore. She was too far gone.

Lena’s hand went to her face, and softly, delicately, almost, touched the skin of her cheek, right below her eye.

She proceeded to bring the hand up to her face, looking puzzled at what she found there.

“Don’t tell me the big Supergirl is afraid to die?” she heard Lena murmur, but Kara couldn’t answer her anymore.

She blinked slowly, and each time she opened her eyes again, it became harder to do so. The noises of the struggling agents, the strong robots and the radiating power from Lena’s chest all became quieter, like she was being pulled underwater.

The pain lessened. It seemed to go away with every slow blink of her eyes.

Kara felt so grateful, she didn’t even question it.

Thank Rao, thank Lena, thank whoever was pulling her under for taking her away from the misery and the pain she was feeling.

Kara watched as Lena’s eyes stayed trained on her during all of it. Surprise and fascination on her face turned to quiet acceptance. Satisfaction? Kara didn’t know. Lena’s green eyes looked on as Kara died, a single tear running over her cheek.

Kara closed her eyes, and the last thing she saw was Lena’s chin snapping up to look at something Kara couldn’t see.

Suddenly, the weight on her chest was gone. She thought she heard someone yelling out her name. The sound was vaguely familiar, but too far away for her to notice.

Someone tugged on her body. She heard slow, far-away voices murmur things in a language she didn’t understand.

And she was at peace.

Kara was finally done.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Hi guys, thank you for reading! 
> 
> Happy Supercorp Sunday!!! I hope you all enjoyed this chapter! It's a little darker than I'd anticipated, but, oh well. Next chapters will focus more on Kara and Other Lena together. We'll have more scenes where Kara and Other Lena talk more and find that maybe, they have some things in common. So stay tuned!  
> Please tell me what you think, either here or on [my Tumblr!](https://thingsanddreamsandstuff.tumblr.com)  
> [Link text](url)  
> A song I loved for this chapter is a mash-up which you can find right [here](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=PCN-MeBXND0) .
> 
> That’s it for today, hope you guys all liked it!! Have a great day, and stay safe out there!


	3. Chapter 3

_“But why can’t you come with me?”_

_A smear of dust and ash was wiped lovingly off her forehead._

_“We can’t, Kara. There’s no time. You have to go!”_

_“But – ”_

_“You’ll take care of Kal-El, you’ll make us proud. We know you will. You’ll make sure we won’t be forgotten.”_

_“But who will take care of us?”_

_“We believe in you, Kara. You’ll find your way. You’ll be alright, you’ll have your cousin with you. You’ll never be alone.”_

_“But I don’t want to leave you!”_

_“We’ll meet again, Kara. I promise. But you must go now. We’re out of time.”_

_“We know you’ll do great things, Kara. You’ll blow them all away. You’ll do so good!”_

_“Be good, Kara. Don’t forget what we taught you.”_

_“I won’t.”_

_“The journey to earth will be long. But we’ll be right with you. You can sleep. You can sleep, and dream of us.”_

_“Dream of you?”_

_“It’ll be over before you know it. Be safe Kara Zor-El.”_

_“Don’t forget us, Kara.”_

_A kiss, a hug, one last fleeting look. Then a cold new home, a push and a launch. A loud bang, a strong hit against her thin layer of protection in the cold universe – and then there was only darkness. Endless, long, scary darkness, with only the stars who remembered where she’d come from and who she really was._

* * *

Kara woke up with a loud painful gasp.

Her lungs screamed inside of her, and Kara greedily sucked in the oxygen around her to alleviate the pain. Once she was sure she was able to, she took in long, grateful gulps of air, like she hadn’t been breathing for the longest time. The blood rushed to her head as an annoying, incessant beeping rang in her ears. A painful pressure weighed heavily on her chest and Kara struggled to make sense of the world around her. Her body felt wrong, painful, foreign – and Kara wished she could just shake it off, crawl out of it, like those snakes on the Discovery channel. She had to get out of her own body and –

“Kara!”

The name was too loud in the quiet room. Even louder than those stupid beeps.

“Awtch,” Kara mumbled. Her voice felt raw and dry, like her vocal chords had been inactive for way too long.

“Oh my God, you’re awake!”

Alex came rushing to her side so quick it made Kara dizzy.

“Oh my God,” Alex almost cried relieved. “You’re awake, you’re awake.”

She carefully kissed the top of Kara’s head.

“I was so worried,” she whispered against Kara’s hair. “I was so scared. But you’re awake, you’re alright. You’re – oh thank God.”

“And I thought I was the one who rambled,” Kara tried to joke, but her voice came out a painful scratch.

Alex barely cracked a smile, her eyes flickering over Kara’s face, never locking eyes for more than a few short seconds.

She didn’t look good. She had bags under her eyes, and angry, red scratches near her eyes.

“Rao,” Kara whispered, “what happened to you?”

She brought a trembling arm up so she could touch Alex’ face, and was surprised by how heavy her limbs felt. Like all her muscles had forgotten how to work, and she needed all the strength in the universe to lift a single finger.

Alex took Kara’s hand and put it against her cheek so she could lean against it, closing her eyes for a moment.

“I can’t believe you’re worried about what happened to me,” she shook her head, but her eyes were starting to spill over. “You’re the one in the hospital bed.”

Kara looked around to find that she was indeed in the med bay of the D.E.O.

“Oh boy,” she whispered. “That’s not great. What happened?”

“You don’t remember?” Alex asked, a note of concern in her voice.

“Ehm…” Kara tried to think back to what had happened, but a throbbing in her head made that very hard.

“Please, try and remember,” Alex said, her brows creasing together with worry. “I want to make sure you’re alright. I want to know you didn’t sustain any brain damage.”

Kara looked at Alex with big eyes.

“Oh,” she swallowed, “right.”

Alex sat down on her bed, and waited patiently.

“Ehm, I think… Lena attacked? No – ”

Kara tried to shake her head.

“Not our Lena. Other Lena. Right?”

Alex didn’t answer, but she didn’t have to.

Flashes of Lena’s dark eyes, the storm on her face and the smirk around her lips as she relished in Kara’s screams and agony rushed back. The fear of suddenly realizing she was all alone. Blood curling screams that weren’t her own.

And Kara knew it had to be real.

“She tried to kill me,” Kara said hoarsely.

She tried to remember how it felt, almost dying, but Kara’s couldn’t recall anything more than the vague concept of searing pain and the deep green of Lena’s eyes. Everything after that just consisted of swirls and blobs of colors, sounds and unreliable memories. Undefined, inexplicable, and possibly not even real. Kara couldn’t be sure what parts of the flickers of images crossing through her mind were actual memories, and what parts were just comforting lies her brain had come up with to ease the terror of facing her impending death.

Kara shook her head.

“She used Kryptonite… and then she disabled the guards. Or the other way around I – ”

Kara’s eyebrows knitted together, and she closed her eyes for just a second as the throbbing in her head increased with every effort to regain some control over her memories. Everything just blurred together. It was confusing and painful, and it made Kara want to scream out in frustration, because why on earth wouldn’t her mind just… cooperate? How could it possibly be this hard?

Alex didn’t interrupt her. She didn’t spur her on. Kara guessed she wanted her to come up with the truth on her own. But Rao, Kara would appreciate some clues maybe. A little more background information, or literally anything else that could jog her memory… But instead, to Kara’s great frustration, Alex just sat there, looking at her with so much expectation in her eyes, that it made Kara itch to just blurt out the first plausible guess of what could have happened, just to be able to stop playing this godawful memory game. 

“I think…”

She looked to Alex for reassurance.

“I think she attacked me. And I couldn’t stop her,” Kara whispered. “And then she was on top of me. She…”

Bits and pieces came back to Kara.

The crushing weight on her chest that only amplified when the Other Lena went to sit on her chest, making it feel like she was trying to crack every single bone in Kara’s body, starting with her ribs. The incessant green beam, the excruciating pain, how her screams only went down when her throat was bleeding raw and –

“And she wanted to kill me.”

The words were true, Kara knew, but that didn’t make it any easier to process them. Lena, Other Lena, her Lena, or not her Lena – it was all too confusing, but Lena… Lena Luthor, a version of the woman she’d known and loved for years – had tried to kill her.

“And she damn near succeeded too,” Alex finally said hoarsely. “If we’d arrived just a second later – I – ”

She shook her head.

“I don’t even want to think about it.”

“You saved me,” Kara realized. “Again. You were the one who rushed in.”

“Well,” Alex rolled her eyes. “I have to admit I had help this time.”

Kara frowned, confused.

“Lena was the one who told us we had to leave quickly too. She didn’t trust the Other Lena not to have a trick up her sleeve.”

Alex raised her eyebrows.

“Good thing we believed her, cause turns out she was right. We found you, barely conscious on the floor, our other agents facing down those robots, and that bitch sitting on your chest, aiming that fucking torture device at you.”

“Alex – ”

“Thank fuck Lena got there first though,” Alex muttered to herself, running a hand through her short hair. The movement cast a shadow over her face and accentuated the dark circles under her eyes.

She looked exhausted.

“Lena got there?” Kara piped up.

That was news. That was unexpected. Kara hadn’t seen, heard, or noticed any Lena besides the one trying to kill her at the D.E.O.

Unfortunately, Alex didn’t seem bothered to talk about it. She looked kind of… absent. She probably hadn’t slept in days and didn’t notice Kara’s burning need to know more about what happened. Usually, Kara had all the love and patience in the world for her sister, but not now.

For once, Kara couldn’t let Alex take a break. She _needed_ to know.

“Alex,” Kara asked impatiently. “Lena got there?”

Alex turned to her, almost absentmindedly.

“Uh, yeah,” she said, shaking her head slightly. “She had her private chauffeur ready to go and didn’t wait for us to leave the building.”

Alex paused.

“Good thing she didn’t though. A few seconds later and…”

She stopped. Bit her nail.

Kara waited.

“You should’ve seen her, Kar,” Alex finally went on. “She went berserk on the woman. Got her good, too. I don’t think I’ve ever seen her get so absolutely feral. I thought she was going to kill that bitch.”

Kara had to suppress an angry sting at Alex’ choice of words. She knew Alex had every right to hate the Other Lena, but that didn’t make it any easier to swallow down her irritation.

“If the other one hadn’t been strong enough to fight her off, she might as well have.”

Kara had to shake off the disturbing thought of Lena killing her Other self. That would make for some excellent material for her next therapy session for sure. Lena’s therapist would have a field day with that particular story.

“She got hurt?”

Alex shrugged.

“Some bruises,” she said. “Nothing too bad.”

“And you?” Kara whispered.

“Oh,” Alex said casually. “The Other Lena managed to get a few scratches in, but overall, I think we’re the ones who really came out on top. Once we got her off you, she couldn’t reprogram the robots to attack us, and we were basically in the clear. The fight was over pretty much after that.”

Kara nodded slowly.

She felt a pang of guilt in her chest at the slight reproach she felt towards Alex. She didn’t mean to, but she couldn’t help being a little frustrated over Alex’ casual approach to attacking Lena. She acted so… unaffected. Indifferent. She’d just hurt and locked up one of Kara’s best friends, and she acted so trivial. So natural. Like it didn’t matter. Like she hadn’t been friends with Lena herself for years. Like they hadn’t shared stories over glasses of scotch in Kara’s living room.

Still, Kara had to remember it was for the best. Other Lena had been ready to kill her. She had very nearly killed her. Kara should probably be grateful Alex hadn’t killed her, because from the looks of it, Alex definitely did not seem averse to the idea.

But that did beg the question. What did they do with Other Lena?

“Where is she now?” Kara asked softly, looking away from Alex.

“Who, Lena?” Alex asked. “She’s at LuthorCorp with Lex. Working on that portal thingy. That reminds me, I still need to shoot her a text to tell her you’re okay. She was asking about you.”

Kara couldn’t really think about what that meant now. It hurt too much.

“I meant… I meant the Other Lena.”

“Oh,” Alex’ face hardened. “Don’t you worry about her. She’s locked away behind our thickest walls in our most guarded cell. She won’t be able to hurt you ever again.”

“Right,” Kara whispered.

She had to admit that despite the D.E.O.’s expertise, she truly believed that if the Other Lena was fully committed, she could break out of that cell without even breaking a sweat. It was delusional to think otherwise. The smartest person of her time with the knowledge and experience of ruling over an entire city with an iron fist? It was laughable to think that the D.E.O. could hold her for long.

“You don’t have to be afraid, Kara,” Alex leaned in, misinterpreting Kara’s silence. She covered Kara’s hand with hers. “We’ve dealt with her. We’re going to banish her from this place so she can’t ever lay a finger on you again.”

Kara nodded. She paused, mulling over the question she really wanted to ask.

She already knew it wasn’t going to be a winner, but on the other hand, she was hurt and sad, and Alex could rarely say no to her big eyes. What did she have to lose?

“Can I see her?” Kara asked eventually, after having found the courage to speak her mind.

Alex’ eyebrows flew up into her hairline.

“I’m sorry, what?”

“Can I see her?” Kara repeated softly.

“Kara,” Alex protested, “that’s not – that is – not a good idea.”

She took a deep breath, trying to remain calm. She didn’t want to upset Kara.

“I feel,” Alex started carefully, avoiding Kara’s eyes, “that that decision wouldn’t be the best course of action. I feel, like that’s not a good idea.”

Kara wanted to protest, but Alex didn’t let her finish.

“Look, Kara,” Alex said, trying very hard to sound reasonable. “She’s dangerous, even from a distance. I saw the effects she had on you. I don’t want her to hurt you any more than she already has by saying hateful and spiteful things. She’s a monster. She’s the bad guy – the villain! I don’t want her to get to you.”

“I can handle it,” Kara insisted. “I just… I need closure. Or something. I need to talk to her.”

Alex sighed. She knew she couldn’t change her sister’s mind with all the power in the universe.

“Kara – ”

“I can take it,” Kara reassured her. “I’m not afraid.”

“Well I am!”

A silence fell over the room.

Then –

“We can’t stay afraid, Alex,” Kara murmured. “She’s just a person. Nothing more than that. Just another person. I think it would be good for us to see her like that. For me to see her like that.”

Alex sighed and closed her eyes. Her right hand came up to cover her eyes, which Kara recognized to be one of the first signs of defeat. She waited impatiently, until finally –

“Fine,” Alex said reluctantly, putting her hand down and opening her eyes to look at Kara with no small amount of dissatisfaction that Kara had gotten her way yet again. “But only if there’s agents right there with you, and you have a panic button on you that contacts me the second something is wrong. Is that clear?”

Kara nodded enthusiastically.

“Crystal. Let’s go!”

She tugged the blanket off of her, sat up, spun her legs over the bed and… was promptly shoved back down again.

“Not so fast, Supergirl,” Alex warned. “You’re still recovering from a horrendous attack. You’re not going anywhere until you feel better.”

“But I – ” Kara protested.

“No buts,” Alex held up her hands. “You want to visit Other Lena, fine. But my D.E.O., my rules. And my rules dictate that you stay in this bed until I dismiss you. Take it or leave it.”

“Fine,” Kara grumbled, pulling the blanket over her torso again. “But your rules suck,” she added petulantly.

Alex smiled. “That’s my girl.”

* * *

It took a total of three days for Kara to heal completely. While the kryptonite had left her body pretty quickly, her limbs still ached from the horrible pains she’d had to endure. Kara still felt a crushing pressure on her chest every time she accidentally took in a deep breath. She felt tired, and got exhausted after walking a flight of stairs. Even after using her powers – which had luckily come back in soon – it took her longer to recuperate after using them. One afternoon, while heating up her pizzas for everyone at the D.E.O. with her laser eyes, she’d been completely burned out after, and had to lie down with an insufferable headache, and a scolding from Alex so bad and so intense, she genuinely felt sorry for all the other agents who were at her mercy for the rest of the day.

She’d been temporarily put off-duty, by order of her sister.

Kara didn’t mind too much. She was just waiting for the moment Alex officially discharged her, so she could finally see Lena. Other Lena.

She didn’t completely understand her urge to contact the dark woman who’d almost succeeded at killing her twice – a feat not many could say they’d accomplished. She didn’t get why she was impatiently counting the hours, and imagining where Lena was and what she was doing, and how she was doing and what she was thinking about… Kara realized it was unhealthy. Probably bordering on obsessive, but she didn’t care enough to over-analyse her thoughts. She wanted to see Other Lena, and she would keep it at that.

She just couldn’t get the Other Lena out of her head.

There was something so strange about picturing her Lena, her best friend, being overcome with the urge to destroy her. It didn’t make sense. It wasn’t Lena. And Lena and Other Lena weren’t the same, but Kara still couldn’t comprehend how one single event could change everything about Lena. It was tiring to think about. It kept her up at night.

Over and over again, she thought about what she would say to Other Lena. What speeches she could come up with to convince Lena to choose peace instead of war, happiness instead of rage. All the words Kara could imagine, but was sure she’d forget the moment she’d see her. At night Kara could only toss and turn, more than once accidentally throwing her blankets to the floor in the middle of sweaty fever dreams about Lena, Other Lena, smirking at her before producing a green knife and slitting her throat. Sometimes, Other Lena’s chest would crack open right before she pulled out the knife, and she would bleed pools of green blood that splattered across the floor, burning away at the edges of Kara’s dream. But the most horrifying part of the dream was how unperturbed Other Lena was. The sickening crunch of her ribs breaking open didn’t make her pause. She just advanced with the knife in hand, slashing the air inbetween the two of them, while Kara tried in vain to get away from her.

She never did, and Other Lena killed her every single time.

When she woke up, Kara could only grasp at her throat, convinced she could feel the dent of the blade in her skin.

It was exhausting.

But the days passed, the nights went by quicker with their confusing, terrifying dreams, and finally, freaking finally, the day rolled around where Alex finally had to begrudgingly admit that Kara was healthy enough to get discharged, which meant that she was also healthy enough to go down to the basement. To the cells.

Alex tried one last time to talk her out of it, but Kara didn’t change her mind. Just the thought of seeing Other Lena again made her heart race, and made things flutter inside.

She was going to see _Lena_.

So, per Alex’ orders, she was escorted to Lena’s cell by two of the bulkiest bulkiest agents the D.E.O. had to offer. Other Lena’s cell was two levels down, in their heavily-guarded basement, usually reserved for their strongest alien captives. Kara passed dozens of impassive looking guards holding gigantic guns, and had to go through several security protocols before she could actually get to the cell block where Other Lena was held. The agents brought her right down to the lonely cell block, where only one prisoner resided.

Apparently, Alex was scared Other Lena could be dangerous to other criminals. Kara didn’t immediately disagree.

One of the agents opened the door and wanted to step in, but Kara stopped him with a hesitant hand on his shoulder.

“Would it be okay if I went in alone?”

“Director said to join you inside,” one of the agents said.

From his tone, Kara couldn’t deduce whether he was angry, or just stating a simple fact.

“I know but I think I’ll be alright. I can handle my sister. I’ve got my panic button, right?”

She held up the black circle Alex had given her beforehand. A tiny device that connected to Alex’ earpiece, and would send an alarm the second Kara pressed it.

The agents stared her down for a few seconds, but Kara didn’t back down. She stared right back, and tried to put on her best ‘Almighty Supergirl’ face, even though she was technically clad in a knitted sweater and some comfy, stretchy jeans.

Eventually, the agents exchanged a look, and one of them simply shrugged.

“Fine,” he said.

“We’ll be just outside,” the other man grumbled. “She’s the only one there. Can’t miss her.”

“Okay,” Kara said softly. “Thank you.”

“Shout if you need anything,” the first one added.

Kara nodded, took a deep breath and slipped inside the block.

The D.E.O.’s cells were top notch. They models were quite elegant, for a prison at least. They featured blue lights, and white, modern furniture. Granted, it wasn’t much, except for a bed, a desk and a tiny bathroom, but it was something.

Lena’s cell was closed by a thick wall of glass, separating her from Kara.

The woman was lying on her bed, seemingly asleep.

Her eyes were closed, and her skin was so pale, it looked almost scary and ghastly under the unflattering blue light. She wasn’t wearing her suit anymore. She was wearing a black D.E.O. prisoner’s outfit that was unflattering on anyone except for Lena. Well, Kara mused, the woman could wear a potato sack and still find a way to accessorize correctly and pull it off. They must’ve found a way to cover up her kryptonite core, because Kara didn’t see any of the substance radiating in the air around Lena. Maybe they put some kind of protective cover over it.

The thought of someone forcing Lena to undress and bare the most intimate part of her body that had been convoluted and messed with by so many people who shouldn’t have laid a finger on her was kind of sickening, and Kara almost felt angry at the D.E.O. for putting Lena through anything so demeaning.

Kara knew that wasn’t fair. It was a weapon they couldn’t just take away from her. They had to compromise it somehow. Her rational thinking didn’t take away the nauseating feeling in the pit of Kara’s stomach.

Other Lena didn’t budge all through Kara’s internal ramblings, and just when she started to wonder if she should leave to let Lena rest, and just come back some other time, Lena spoke up.

“Are you here to taunt me, Supergirl?”

Kara was so startled by the sound, she shot back, temporarily forgetting Lena couldn’t get to her.

Other Lena laughed huskily.

She opened her eyes and sat up in one fluid move.

Kara had to swallow her nerves at the sight of Lena Luthor’s sharp, penetrating gaze.

“I – no,” she whispered. “I wouldn’t do that.”

Lena hummed.

“Yet you came by anyway. Why?”

“I,” Kara started, but she realized she didn’t know what she wanted to say, so she closed her mouth again.

The corner of Lena’s mouth lifted up.

“Can’t say?” she asked with a tilt of her head.

Kara shook her head.

“Don’t know what to say,” she responded.

Lena’s eyes narrowed at the simple, honest answer.

“You don’t know why you’re here,” she stated.

Kara shook her head.

“I just knew I wanted to see you again. Had to see you again,” she corrected herself.

Lena paused.

“Took you long enough to get to me. Three days, if my calculations are correct.”

Kara didn’t say anything.

“Though maybe,” Lena’s eyes swept over Kara’s bruised, fragile form and she smirked. “Maybe it wasn’t by choice. I might not have killed you, but I did do a number on you, didn’t I?”

Kara cast her eyes down.

Lena chuckled.

“Why so quiet, Supergirl? Last time we spoke you had an awful lot to say.”

“Last time we spoke you almost killed me,” Kara said.

“So this is your new approach?” Lena clarified. “You think if you’re silent, I might not go after you when I break out of this cell?”

“When?” Kara asked, ignoring Lena’s taunt.

“Oh yes,” Lena grinned her teeth bare. “It’s only a matter of time, I’m sure.”

“You’re confident,” Kara noted.

“Experience and time have allowed me to be,” Lena replied.

“I’m sure,” Kara said softly.

A moment of silence broke between the two of them.

“How are you?” Kara asked. “How are you holding up?”

Lena threw her a look. “Aside from being stuck in a prison cell, you mean?”

“Well,” Kara fiddled with her thumbs, “it’s only temporary. But yes. Aside from that. How are you?”

Lena shrugged.

“I’m doing okay. This mattress is a killer on my back though,” she said, rubbing her lower back in strong strokes.

Kara almost smiled.

“Well, I heard they tried, but they just could fit your custom-made, queen size mattress into the cell,” Kara quipped.

Lena rolled her eyes, but a slight smirk tugged on her lips.

“Well,” she said dryly, “as long as they tried.”

Kara let out a short laugh she didn’t even feel coming. It surprised her.

Lena surprised her.

“I’m surprised your sister let you come,” Lena noted eventually. “She was quite the animal when she found me.”

“You were killing me,” Kara reminded her.

“Oh yes,” Lena said, “I remember. But I have to say,” she pondered, “strong as she was, she was nothing compared to me. Well, the other me, that is.”

She raised an eyebrow.

“Your me?”

“Alex said she was… upset,” Kara managed to say.

Good, neutral.

Lena let out a short, humorless laugh.

“Well that’s the understatement of the year. She nearly ripped my throat out. I’ll tell you, it is something else getting attacked by your mirror image.”

Kara silently agreed.

“I never knew I had it in me to get so… defensive over someone else,” Lena mused, almost more to herself than to Kara. “Or we, I should say. My other half at least seems to possess that particular quality.”

Lena raised her eyebrows, almost like she was admiring her own fighting form in her memories.

“I have to admit it has been a very long time since anyone attacked me so viciously, so unafraid. She really did not hold back. No consequences in this world.”

She shook her head, clearing her mind.

Kara recognized that particular move. Lena made it all the time when she had to think of something new, a new subject, a clean slate. She’d shake her head, as if to physically shake off whatever thought occupied her mind before so she could spring into action.

“Left me with this too,” Lena pointed at a dark shadow on her temple.

Kara thought it had just been the lighting.

“Oh God,” Kara said horrified. “Lena did that?”

Other Lena blinked.

“Are you surprised?”

Kara bit her lip.

“I don’t know,” she had to admit. “I just thought… I thought Alex had done that to you.”

“No,” Other Lena said, intrigue flashing in those eyes. “It was all your Lena.”

“She’s not my Lena,” Kara whispered – too quickly.

Lena’s head tilted up, interested.

“Oh?” she asked.

No, no. Don’t go there.

“It sounded more in character for my sister,” Kara said, changing the subject. “And I just thought… no, I hoped that Lena – the Lena from this dimension,” she clarified, “would have a harder time hurting you.”

Other Lena raised her eyebrows and Kara sighed.

“But I guess she didn’t.”

Lena chuckled. “It didn’t seem to bother her for a second.”

Kara frowned, looking at the purplish coloration around Lena’s eye and eyebrow. It looked really painful.

“I’m sorry,” Kara said genuinely. “I’ll talk to Alex. Maybe she can give you some ice or something. Or a salve. I don’t really know what helps.”

“Talk to – you realize I was killing you, right?”

Kara absentmindedly brought her hand up to her still tender chest.

“I know that,” she whispered roughly.

“And you know that all’s fair in love and war?” Lena raised an eyebrow mockingly.

“I don’t actually agree with that.”

Lena chuckled. “Of course you don’t.”

She leaned her head back against the wall, looking relaxed, almost like she was having a conversation with a friend instead of the woman she’d tried to kill.

Kara smiled shyly and looked down at her lap when she felt Lena’s eyes on her. The woman seemed curious. Intrigued. It seemed like she was trying to find something out about Kara, but couldn’t quite manage it. Lena tilted her head, and her eyes narrowed slightly.

“Is that why you didn’t fight back?” she asked.

There was no malice in her voice. She didn’t seem smug, but rather confused, or more curious than anything else.

“I did fight back,” Kara said, but Lena quickly waved her words away.

“No you didn’t, don’t lie. You didn’t fight back, not really. Not like you usually do.”

Kara knew she was right.

“You stopped resisting. You didn’t even try to run.”

“Maybe I couldn’t,” Kara whispered. “Maybe it was too much. You caught me by surprise.”

“Maybe,” Lena agreed. “But I don’t believe that. I’ve seen enough footage of you flying around the city to know that you can take a hit. Several, actually.”

“I fought back,” Kara said. “I did. I just didn’t want to hurt you.”

“Why not?” Lena asked, leaning forward. “This is the second time we’ve fought, and it is the second time you’ve refused to activate your powers for anything else than just protection.”

Kara looked away.

“You don’t know me, Supergirl,” Other Lena said sharply. “And yet you seem to think – foolishly, I might add – that if you don’t bother attacking, I’ll somehow have a change of heart and spare you?”

“That is not true,” Kara bit back.

“Then why, Supergirl? Why won’t you just – ”

“Because you look like _her_!” Kara snapped.

“Like your Lena?” Other Lena asked with a raised eyebrow.

“She’s not – ” Kara stopped and closed her eyes.

When she opened them, Other Lena was still looking at her. Patient, unhurried.

Kara wanted to stay silent. She wanted to let go of this topic, but it seemed that the Other Lena wasn’t planning on saying anything anytime soon. It seemed like she relished in the silence, or maybe she just relished in seeing how uncomfortable it made Kara.

Kara hated big stretches of silence. She would always be the first to blurt out something stupid, just to say _something_. Just to get rid of the silence that would almost physically cling to her body. And she didn’t know how, but she was sure that Other Lena could read the tension on her face, and liked to prolong her suffering. As if she knew that as long as she didn’t change the subject, Kara would give her all the information she wanted.

And damn Lena and her ability to read literally everyone so freaking well, because as Kara tried to bite her tongue, she eventually caved and whispered: “It’s complicated.”

“Oh?” Other Lena asked, stupid little smirk on her face.

“That’s it,” Kara said, a little irritated at both herself for blurting out what she didn’t want to say, and at Lena for dragging it out of her by doing the bare minimum of just staying silent. “It’s just complicated.”

Other Lena rolled her eyes.

“You almost get yourself killed, twice, by someone you clearly know very well – ”

“Well I wouldn’t say very well, it’s more – ”

“And then you go through huge physical trauma,” Other Lena cut her off with a sharp glance “ – because I know the power I hold, and I know you didn’t spend three days just hanging around a beach sipping mojitos. You get hurt by the mirror image of someone you clearly have multiple levels of tensions with, and then the second you get yourself discharged from whatever hospital in this city will even treat aliens like you – ”

Kara sighed and rolled her eyes.

“ – you come and visit me,” Other Lena finished.

She paused, almost as if she needed to ponder on the words that had just left her lips. She leaned back against the wall of her cell, and looked at Kara absentmindedly, like her mind was already working on a different problem.

It didn’t fool Kara, though. She knew that Lena’s mind was sharp enough to be focused on about a hundred different things going on in one room. Nothing escaped Lena Luthor. And to think that she was distracted and wasn’t processing every single move you made was a dangerous and downright idiotic move.

“What is it,” Other Lena asked finally, “with you and my, shall we say, ‘better half,’ that you can’t fight back even when your life is at stake?”

“I don’t – ”

“I can’t figure it out,” Other Lena said, her tone bordering on disgruntled, a mockery of a pout playing around her lips, like she couldn’t believe her stellar brain couldn’t comprehend what should be such an easy interaction to interpret. “I’ve gone over your interactions with the other me hundreds of times in my head, and yet I can’t seem to understand what could cause a superpowered being like you to act so… subservient.”

“I am not subservient!” Kara said belligerently.

Other Lena hummed. “Yet you scare from her so easily.”

“I don’t…” Kara hesitated. “There’s nothing with me and Lena. She was – she’s… I care for her.”

“Care for her,” Other Lena repeated.

“Yes I – ” Kara stopped herself.

She shook her head.

“You know what, I don’t want to talk about this anymore. It’s not right to talk about Lena. You’re not her, and she’s not you, and we shouldn’t be talking about her.”

“You came to me,” Other Lena reminded her sharply. “Let’s not forget that I don’t currently have the freedom to go anywhere,” she bit. “I don’t have the freedom to tell you to fuck off because I don’t want to talk to you because I’m fucking stuck here! Largely thanks to you, by the way!”

“I didn’t make you come here!” Kara bit back. “I didn’t ask you to come back to kill me! You did that all by yourself!”

“But you came to _me_ , Supergirl,” Other Lena retorted. “You came tripling down those stairs like a sad little alien puppy, crying out for something. Begging for my scraps of attention.”

Kara clenched her jaw.

“Either you’re fucking starved for attention, or you have the most boring life in existence that you feel the need to come crawling to me the second you get your powers back.”

“Oh screw me for thinking you might need someone to talk to!” Kara shouted.

She balled her fists by her side, feeling the familiar heat brew behind her eyes, as she tried to contain the anger she felt.

“Oh don’t pretend for a second that you came here for _my_ benefit.”

Disdain dripped from her words.

“You came here to see _me_. You couldn’t wait to see _me_. And why is that, _Supergirl_?”

Kara clenched her jaw so she wouldn’t yell again. That wasn’t the Kryptonian way. She as above this. She was above Other Lena’s low jabs, her vitriol and her insane need to control everything and everyone around her.

“Tell me, Supergirl,” Other Lena started again, “because I cannot for the life of me figure it out. What do you need from me? Why are you here?”

“I’m not – ”

“Because I don’t know whether you’re here out of some misguided idea that I’m somehow the perfect copy of your friend, or whatever you want to call her,” Other Lena said coldly. “Maybe you’re here to see if you can gossip with me about boys or whatever the fuck you actually do with my miserable other half. Or…”

A devious glint sparked in her eyes and Kara’s stomach tightened at the sight.

Other Lena leaned in closer once more, still far enough away from the glass to make Kara feel safe, but close enough so that it felt like she was the one on display. Like she was the one being observed in captivity, like an alien in a zoo.

“Or maybe,” Other Lena continued slowly, “maybe you’re here because seeing death twice just wasn’t enough for you.”

Kara’s heart froze at the words.

“Maybe you needed the thrill of seeing me again.”

“That’s not true,” Kara spat out.

“Isn’t it?” Lena tilted her head. “Because I have the feeling I’m getting to know you pretty well.”

Her smirk disappeared.

“Torturing a woman will do that.”

“You don’t know me,” Kara whispered slowly.

“No?” Other Lena asked. “So you’re not here because seeing me was the most exciting thing you’ve looked forward to in months?”

“I…”

Kara tried to scoff, to throw something back in Other Lena’s face, to retort with some witty remark that would make her back off, that would make _her_ uncomfortable… but all she could suddenly think about were the dreams in her hospital bed. Other Lena, time and time again, killing her, torturing her… and still, all that had been on Kara’s mind was seeing her again, in real life.

The reality of it all was suddenly too much, and too tangible for Kara to run away from. In her hospital bed, in the confusing period of fluids being pushed into her body, recovering from such hellish pains, it had seemed easier to disregard her dreams, to focus on Other Lena as just another person she needed to help. A potential friend she could gain if she could only just talk to her.

Staring at Other Lena’s dark smile did just the opposite.

It made Kara realize with a sinking feeling that she didn’t want to stay there and listen to her. She wanted to get away from her. From all the nasty things she could say.

“Stop.” Kara tried to sound resolute, but her voice came out as a strangled whimper, and Other Lena’s smile broadened slightly.

There was no glee in Other Lena’s eyes, no real happiness at seeing Kara’s distress. There was just a kind of satisfaction, like she relished in breaking Kara. As if not being to kill Kara had left her empty and unfulfilled, aching with the all-consuming need to destroy even the smallest part of Kara.

Be it her life or the last grasp on her sanity Kara still thought she had, Other Lena seemed to want to want to watch it all shatter.

“Maybe,” Other Lena continued, “maybe you’re so pathetic that nearly dying was the closest thing to living you could feel. Maybe, you’ve never felt more alive than when you were screaming and begging for it to continue.”

Her eyes narrowed.

“Maybe you relished in the pain. Needed to feel it. And maybe you wanted to look me in the eye again because you’re practically begging me to try and kill you again. Is that it?”

Kara’s mouth had fallen open in disbelief as she watched the Other Lena practically press her forehead against the glass by how far she was leaning forward.

“Is that it, _Kara_?” Other Lena asked mockingly. “Does the great, big Supergirl have a deathwish?”

Before Kara could find it in her to fight back, their conversation was cut short with a start.

“Just what the hell do you think you’re doing?”

Both Other Lena and Kara jumped up at the sudden intrusion.

Other Lena’s shoulders tightened instantly, and her face contorted into a defensive snarl. She looked more like an animal, driven into a corner than a human being. More dangerous than before. Less like someone to talk to, and more like the woman that haunted her every dream.

It made Kara unconsciously reach for her neck.

The other Lena Luthor, the real one, the primary one, whatever they’d settled on when Kara was unconscious, crossed the hall with angry strides, face as stormy and dangerous as Kara had ever seen her.

“Uh-oh,” Other Lena sing-songed softly from inside the cell. “Someone’s in trouble.”

“Shut up,” Kara mumbled, but she anxiously awaited Lena’s arrival.

Lena came to a halt not too far from Kara, who instinctively took a few steps back.

Lena was absolutely terrifying when she was mad. She took a deep breath, closing her eyes for a split second, and Kara knew she was in trouble. When Lena had to center herself before yelling at someone, chances were, you were about to enter the worst moments of your life – moments you really didn’t recover from easily.

And Kara was pretty sure Lena was not about to go easy on her.

“Lena!” she tried, voice awfully high-pitched and enthusiastic. “How are y-” 

“When your sister told me you were planning on going down here, I thought she was making a bad, unsuccessful attempt at a joke,” Lena spat. “Because I couldn’t believe anyone would be stupid enough – moronic enough to go down to a fucking dungeon to speak to their fucking attacker. But of course, I underestimated you yet again.”

“Lena – ”

“You have found a new way to mess up spectacularly,” Lena snapped. “I don’t know how you continue to astound me with your absolutely foolish ideas, and yet you manage to do it!”

Kara swallowed hard.

“What on earth do you think you’re doing down here?” Lena asked icily. “How could you – what the hell came over you that you thought you needed to come here? You have no reason to be here, Kara!”

“But I just – ”

“Don’t!” Lena cut her off, and Kara fell quiet.

_Rhetorical questions, gotcha._

Lena’s face was contorted into an angry scowl, one that twisted her features into something straight from a scary witch movie.

“You’re barely out of surgery and you think it’s a good time to come down here to face your attacker? You thought that would be the smart thing to do?”

“It’s been three – ”

“This woman,” Lena spat, pointing at the glass window while keeping her eyes on Kara, “is dangerous. I can’t believe your sister was thick-headed enough to allow you to come here!”

“My sister’s not thick-headed,” Kara protested.

“And how you didn’t have the good sense to stay away from someone who just killed you is beyond me!”

“Almost killed me,” Kara corrected her.

“Your heart stopped beating, Kara,” Lena spat. “I’d call that dead.”

Kara’s retort died on her tongue.

A silence fell over the hallway.

“Wait,” Kara said slowly after a hesitant beat. “That’s not… what?”

“Yes,” Lena said with an almost self-satisfied smile. “Bet your sister didn’t tell you that. Maybe she should’ve mentioned it to you, and you wouldn’t have been so stupid as to come down here to talk with your potential murderer!”

Kara recoiled inside when she heard the word murderer. It felt so harsh. So painful. So not-Lena.

Kara allowed herself a fleeting glance at the woman behind the glass.

She looked annoyed, almost angry at her doppelgänger’s interruption. But there wasn’t a single trace of guilt in her eyes. She didn’t feel bad about what Lena had just said. She was probably just annoyed Lena had walked in right when their conversation had turned interesting.

A frown adorned her beautiful face, and her pink lips were pursed together tightly. Somehow, the absence of the dark red lipstick she’d worn the other times Kara had seen her, almost made her seem younger, less scary. Easier to talk to. A lot easier to talk to than the real Lena.

Kara had a hard time reconciling the woman she’d just talked to with the woman who’d tried to kill her. No, she corrected herself. Who had killed her. Temporarily.

Kara swallowed.

“It wouldn’t have changed anything,” she said softly.

That attracted the attention of both Lena’s.

“Excuse me?” her Lena said slowly.

“It wouldn’t have changed anything,” Kara repeated. “I wanted to see her, and I wanted to talk to her. I still do. Even if my sister had shared that with me, I still would’ve come down here.”

Lena’s jaw clenched. “I see you really are as blonde as you look,” she sneered.

“Ugh,” Other Lena rolled her eyes. “A blonde joke? That’s low, even for you.”

Lena shot her a cutting glare.

She turned back to Kara, who was kind of scared to find that the anger hadn’t receded when she looked at her.

“You need to get out right now.”

“But I wasn’t done,” Kara protested.

“I don’t care. She and I need to have a little talk.”

“But that’s – ”

“Go, Supergirl!” Lena snarled.

Her tone made Kara hesitate. Kara wondered if she should put up a fight. Protest. Get angry.

Ultimately, she decided that it probably wasn’t worth the trouble. What could she do? Lena literally held all the power in the room. She could have Lex escort her off the premises with Kryptonite if she really wanted to. Besides, Kara mused sadly, there was a certain intimacy between two people who shared virtually the same existence. Kara figured she was morally bound to let Lena at least talk to the Other Lena in a calmer, more human environment. Even if that environment was the cellblock of a secret government building.

Kara couldn’t say she’d had the chance to sit down with Red Daughter in similar less murder-y circumstances, and that still haunted her, all those months later.

“Fine,” she mumbled. “I’ll go.”

“Good,” Lena snapped, and Kara kept her eyes down, avoiding Lena’s gaze. Even after all this time, feeling the hatred just radiate off of Lena was too much to bear. She didn’t have the time nor the energy to face so much anger, so Kara would rather avoid.

She allowed herself one final glance at the Other Lena behind the glass. The woman was as stiff as a plank, eyes trained on Lena, never letting the woman out of her sight, like she was expecting some kind of attack. Well, Kara mused, she would know.

Kara quickly gathered her things and rushed by the cells.

“Bye,” she whispered furtively.

She didn’t get a reply. Not from either one of the Lenas currently engaged in a staring contest.

While she was being escorted back up by the agents, Kara’s mind started brewing. She’d see Other Lena again, that was for sure. Not Lena, not Alex, not anyone in the D.E.O. could stop her. She would prove the Other Lena wrong. She would find the right words to prove to the Other Lena that she was wrong about her.

But Kara, despite herself, couldn’t help the tiny smile that creeped up on her.

Lena might’ve called her a murderer, but Kara had talked to her. Talked, discussed, maybe even fought with the Other Lena. But they had communicated, and Other Lena hadn’t maimed or killed her.

And that was progress.

Painstakingly-slow-almost-invisible-but-definitely-there progress. And if there was progress, there was at least a chance that the old Lena – whatever version of the Lena there was before the incident – was still in there. And Kara would find her.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> New chapter!!!! Dedicated to the wonderful Nadine who keeps supporting me! <3
> 
> I'm so sorry it's been so long guys! But you know, life, uni and writer's block got in the way. I tried really hard to finish it, and I hope you guys still enjoyed the update (after such an awful wait) and the it didn't disappoint. Lots of Lena/ Kara conversations will follow in future chapters, so if you liked this chapter, you'll probably like the rest of this story too :) 
> 
> Thank you so much for reading, I hope you all enjoyed! Let me know what you thought either here or on [my tumblr!](https://www.tumblr.com/blog/thingsanddreamsandstuff) Also, if you're looking for a specific story, check out [this post!](https://thingsanddreamsandstuff.tumblr.com/post/621217033581887489/hi-guys-im-saving-up-for-my-masters-degree-and)
> 
> I hope you all have a great night/ day. Wishing you all the best! Stay safe out there!  
> xx


	4. Chapter 4

It wasn’t a secret that Kara had a tendency to dance around some rules. Especially if she deemed them unfair. So Kara figured it couldn’t come as a complete surprise that she chose to disregard Lena’s admittedly clear ban on seeing Other Lena.

But in Kara’s defense, the woman hadn’t left her head for days now, and she was just itching to see her again. Questions and doubts about Other Lena’s health and general wellbeing spooked through her mind. And though Kara rationally knew that Other Lena was being taken care of, the hatred in Lena’s eyes was enough for her to doubt whether everyone had the same goal in mind. Namely, to ensure Other Lena’s safe return to her world. To fix everything.

Kara wasn’t sure Lena cared enough about the Other Lena to worry about how she was faring.

So, the second time she came back to the D.E.O.’s cell block was just a week later. She’d sneakily checked Lena’s schedule and found out she had back-to-back meetings at LuthorCorp that day. There was no reason why she should be at the D.E.O. disrupting Kara’s meeting with Other Lena.

She was escorted down by the same agents and was told the same things she’d heard the last time she was there.

If she needed help, she just had to shout.

Kara slipped in, nervously. Her hands clenched and unclenched as she walked down the familiar hallway.

Lena saw her first.

“You’re back,” the woman noted a slight hint of surprise in her voice.

“I am,” Kara smiled nervously.

“I thought for sure that after last time you’d be too scared of my better half to come visit me,” Lena said with a smirk.

Kara blushed.

“I’m Supergirl,” she said. “I’m not afraid of anyone.”

Lena chuckled.

“Somehow, I sincerely doubt that.”

“I fight my enemies,” Kara said. “No matter how scary looking they are.”

“You are brave,” Lena asserted. “I’ll give you that. Scared – but brave. Foolishly so, maybe.”

A smile tugged on Kara’s mouth. It might not have been the best compliment, but she could feel at least a hint of admiration seep through Lena’s voice.

“So,” Other Lena said, sitting up straight, “why did you come here today? Have they found a way to send me back yet?”

“No,” Kara said, “Lena – the other Lena – is still working on it.”

Other Lena nodded slowly. Her gaze seemed to capture every single one of Kara’s movements. It made her almost uncomfortable. _Seen_.

“You know,” Other Lena said, “I hate conversing with people on different heights.”

Kara frowned, confused. “What?”

Lena sighed, closing her eyes.

“Sit down, Supergirl. You look like a dog that has been inside all day.”

“Oh,” Kara blushed. “Ehm.”

She looked around. There were no chairs around, so she just lowered herself to the floor and sat down in a lotus position.

Kara almost thought she saw a smile pass over Lena’s mouth.

“See,” the woman said dryly. “Much more comfortable.”

Kara shrugged.

Lena’s cell was on a platform, so she was still sitting slightly higher than Kara, looking down on her like a queen on a – albeit low – throne.

But Kara didn’t mind.

It felt more like old conversations between her and _her_ Lena. Just the two of them, sitting comfortably on the couch and on the floor, or wherever else they could find a spot to sit in Kara’s usually overflowing apartment.

It felt friendlier.

Even if Lena was in a cell and Kara was sitting on a cold stone floor.

Lena was wearing the same black D.E.O. clothing as last time. Her hair was down now, loose and sleek over her shoulders, stopping around mid-back. Longer than her Lena’s. Lena looked down at her with piercing green eyes.

“How’s the world up there?” Other Lena asked with a quirk of her eyebrow.

“Oh you know,” Kara said, making herself comfortable. “Still turning.”

“Saved a lot of people today?”

Kara wanted to answer, but the question seemed loaded. Like it would immediately imply she didn’t save Other Lena, and that would bring up a flurry of emotions she just couldn’t deal with.

Kara swallowed her fear and tried not to get too caught up in the emotional turmoil of it all.

“A few,” she said vaguely. “Then I had to go to work.”

“Ah,” Other Lena smiled. “I’m assuming I can’t enquire into what that job might be?”

“You can. I’m just not sure how much I can tell you before Director Danvers barges in here to drag me away from you.”

Other Lena laughed huskily.

“Yes, I imagine she wouldn’t like us broaching such delicate subjects.”

Kara shot her a weak smile.

“So let’s talk about something else then.”

Lena crossed her legs and leaned in.

“You rushed off so quickly last time I saw you,” Lena changed subjects. “I figured you wouldn’t come back again.”

“I didn’t want to go,” Kara reminded her. “It’s just… I had to take Lena’s feelings into consideration about the matter, you know?”

Lena raised her eyebrows.

“And what kind of feelings are those?”

Kara looked down uncomfortably.

“I think she doesn’t like you.”

Lena laughed dryly.

“Yes,” she said, “I got that, thank you.”

She quieted down and stared at Kara intensely. Like she was analyzing her.

“Why do you think she hates me so much, huh? After all, we’re one and the same. What possible reason could she have not to like me?”

Kara looked up and shook her head. “I don’t know.”

Lena sighed in annoyance.

“You’re a smart alien, Supergirl. You’ve managed to evade me long enough in my universe. Don’t tell me now you’re that daft. Feigning stupidity is unbecoming. Own up to your intelligence.”

Kara swallowed.

“I guess she doesn’t like to see you because… well I don’t think she likes what you represent.”

Lena leaned closer to the glass.

“And what’s that?” she asked.

Kara barely dared to look at Lena.

“Evil,” she whispered.

Kara held her breath when she looked at Lena, almost expecting an outburst, but the woman didn’t look offended or angry. She looked patient. Intrigued. So, Kara continued.

“I think she thinks of you as a villain,” Kara explained softly. “I’ve always… She’s always tried to do everything right. She’s always wanted to be a hero. She’s always wanted to help people. I guess seeing you as a murderer – ”

Kara shook her head.

“I might’ve told her a while ago that if she acted like a villain, I would treat her like one. That was the worst possible thing I could’ve possibly said to her. She’s always been afraid of turning into her family. Of turning into Lex – and now…”

“And now she’s seeing me,” Lena filled in. “The villain.”

Kara looked away.

“I’m not a villain, Supergirl,” Lena said. “Despite what you think of me.”

“I never said you were one,” Kara whispered. “But you’ve got to admit that if evil were a spectrum, you’d be, you know… tilting towards the extreme just a little bit.”

Lena laughed.

“More than my – this Lena,” Kara argued.

“Oh Supergirl,” Lena shook her head, “you don’t understand this at all, do you?”

“How so?” Kara frowned.

“I only want what’s best for my city. For my fellow humans,” Lena said honestly. “I’ve managed to hold off alien invaders. I worked with an alien hellbent on destroying our planet, and convinced her to join my side, successfully evading an attack we could never have survived as a planet.”

Lena seemed to genuinely believe her own words.

“I’ve created technology that has kept us safe. I made sure aliens like yourself stayed away from my city so no one would have to suffer the same fate I did,” Lena stressed. My only goal – all I’ve ever wanted to do, was to help.”

Kara shook her head.

“That doesn’t sound all that evil to me, _Ka-ra,”_ Other Lena said, drawing out Kara’s name.

“You burned the city to the ground, Lena,” Kara argued confused. “You worked with an uncontrollable psychopath. You hurt countless people in the process.”

Lena listened to her calmly. Like she wasn’t taking her seriously. It upset her.

“Lena, you’ve strayed from your goals,” Kara tried. “A hero doesn’t just kill their enemies left and right, they try and look for a solution!”

Lena’s eyes narrowed, but Kara was too taken by her own arguments.

“I sincerely believe you wanted to do good, but you have to admit you went too far! You’ve hunted, maimed and killed so many people in your National City,” Kara said in disbelief. “You tried to kill _me_. Twice.”

“Succeeded,” Lena corrected her calmly, effectively cutting off Kara’s speech. “You just have a little trouble with staying dead. That’ll be something I have to be aware of next time I kill you.”

Kara wanted to open her mouth to say something but the last words halted the sounds in her throat. She stiffened.

“Next time?”

“Oh Supergirl,” Lena face smoothed over into an expression that kind of reminded Kara of a patient schoolteacher who had to explain to a confused child time and time again that two times three does equal six.

“But… but I – I mean, we – ”

“Supergirl,” Lena said, “you don’t truly think that one little conversation will make me forget about my mission, do you?”

_Had she?_

Kara surely hadn’t forgotten about any of Other Lena’s violent tendencies, but hadn’t she thought they were at least… talking? Having a heart-to-heart? Did killers have rational – bordering on friendly – conversations with their victims? No, right? That wasn’t –

“No, but I thought – we talked about… I didn’t – ” Kara stammered.

“While I mildly entertain myself killing my time here with you, it doesn’t change the fact that you left me to rot,” Lena said, the coolness and the smiles leaving her face completely, instead changing back into the cold, sharp, scary expression from before.

The transformation was so sudden, so quick, it knocked the breath out of Kara’s lungs, and she could only stare – horrified – at Other Lena.

“I suffered because of you. I got tortured, because of you. You failed me. You failed National City. You,” Lena said standing up, “do not deserve to take another breath in this world. The moment I get out of this cell I will make sure you leave this world in the most fitting, most agonizing way possible.”

Lena took a step closer, her fingers spreading out on the glass separating her and Kara. Her sharp fingernails pressed against the glass, looking almost sharp enough to cut straight through it. A cold intense, almost maniacal focus filled her eyes.

“I will rip you apart until you beg for mercy, and even then, I’ll continue, because this time,” she snarled, “this time I’ll make sure you stay dead. I promise you that, Supergirl.”

Kara was so speechless, so horrified, she couldn’t bear looking at that distorted face one more second.

“I will make sure you can’t disappoint another person. I will create a world where you’re not needed, and I will make you sure you’ll never even try to be,” Lena said.

The pain. The fear. The hate on her best friend’s face. The terrible hurt – she couldn’t. She just couldn’t take it. So, without taking another look at Other Lena, she dashed out of the hallway. Away from her. Away from the horrors she didn’t want to relive.

Kara’s heart was beating in her throat. She was panting. She heard the agents call out after her, asking her what had happened, but she couldn’t respond.

Because behind their words, she could still hear Lena chuckle.

“So much for not being afraid, Supergirl,” the woman let her know, before the thick door fell shut, and she was closed off once more.

* * *

Kara didn’t want to go back after that.

In fact, she had very much resisted the entire idea of going back to visit the Other Lena. Other Lena had horrified her so much, that she had managed to accomplish something her Lena had never been able to. She’d made Kara want to stay away from her for the rest of her time there.

That Other Lena wasn’t her Lena.

Maybe it was good she finally realized this. That Other Lena might never be able to let go of her hatred and her grudge, and no matter how sad it made Kara, she couldn’t change that. She couldn’t go back. What was the point in going, if she would just be spat on?

If she was just feeding Other Lena’s bloodlust.

But then Alex had dropped a comment. It was an absentminded, stupid thing. Alex probably hadn’t even been paying attention to what she had been saying at all.

She’d just said something about Lena, about how she was doing that was so… unnerving.

Because Alex described Other Lena in a way that could so easily have depicted _their_ Lena.

She mentioned, very casually, that Lena was growing bored. That the D.E.O. didn’t have enough reading material to keep up with her reading speed, and that the woman was growing frustrated. Annoyed.

She wasn’t being challenged anymore. She didn’t do anything anymore but eat, sleep, and look at the ceiling.

And Kara’s heart had clenched at the thought of Lena – brilliant, amazing, fascinating Lena – just wasting away in a cell, without anything to do. Wilting like the flowers Lena had placed in her office all those years ago. The thought of Lena growing more tired and restless each day made Kara sick to her stomach. She imagined Lena – not quite rotting away – but rather, disappearing. Becoming more transparent, more translucent each day, until one day, people would come down to give her some food, and all that’d be left of Lena would be her imprint on the bed.

The thought filled Kara with such nightmarish dread, that she made up her mind before she knew she did. And God, Kara hadn’t planned on going, she didn’t want to. She didn’t care. But she did.

She cared more than she wanted to. She cared that the person who wanted her dead was fading away, and that no one was doing anything to change that. She didn’t want to think about what it could mean that she couldn’t stay away from her murderer. She preferred not to think about it too much.

So, she found herself going to the D.E.O.’s darkest cells about a week after her last visit.

Lena had been in the cells for over two weeks now. Two weeks of endless, sad loneliness. How much did that feeling remind the Other Lena of the time she was being tortured and held captive by her mother? How many nightmares did it bring along with it?

It was the deciding factor for Kara. She couldn’t do it to Lena. Not to any version of her. Not even to the one eager to kill her.

This time, it took a bit more courage for her to walk through the door. She knew what was waiting for her. An endless stream of hurtful words and horrible threats that would keep her awake and terrified for nights on end.

Still, she fought her own nerves, bit her tongue, clenched her fists, pushed the door open and… found that Lena was asleep in her cell.

Kara’s shoulder slumped. In relief or disappointment, she couldn’t tell, and she didn’t want to find out either.

Lena’s dark hair was spread out over her white pillow, while her dark eyelashes brushed beautifully against her pale skin. The shadows on her face were darker, deeper, making her look thinner and more tired than ever.

Kara knew right there and then it had been a good decision to come, no matter what Alex and Lena claimed. Other Lena needed her. Well not her, so much, but definitely the things she came with.

She quietly crept through the hallway, seeking out the drawer in the cell where guards could push meals and other necessary stuff through.

Kara took a quiet breath, and pulled on the knob. She flinched when she heard the loud squeaky sounds the iron made. She held her breath, looking over at Lena. The other woman was still asleep, laying on her side, a frown adorning her usually calm features.

Kara wondered whether she had nightmares too.

Of her mother? Of the torture she’d endured? The horrors she’d faced, or the horrors she herself had inflicted on others? Did she have nightmares of Kara, flying close to her helicopter, while Lena was begging desperately for her help, just to abandon her and calmly watch her crash to the ground?

Maybe Kara was an important character in her nightmares.

Kara shook her head.

It didn’t matter, she told herself, it didn’t matter. She couldn’t possibly feel guilty about things she did in people’s dreams and imaginations. She just couldn’t. Somehow though, that rational explanation didn’t let her shake off the guilt she felt when she looked at the frown on Lena’s face.

It seemed that even in her dreams, Lena couldn’t get a moment of respite.

Kara opened her bag and retrieved the things she brought for Lena. She’d had to have her back checked meticulously by the security team of the D.E.O., to make sure she wouldn’t bring Lena any weapons or whatnot.

Like Lena couldn’t manage to do enough damage on her own.

The team had begrudgingly had to admit though, that everything Kara had brought with her was safe to leave behind.

Even before she’d even decided to come by to visit Lena, Kara was already walking around her apartment, gathering the things she wanted Lena to have. She didn’t know exactly what Lena liked anymore if she even still made time for her own hobbies. But she did know her Lena, and one thing that Lena loved, was a good book. So, Kara took her copy of Conversations with Friends, My Year of Rest and Relaxation, Dangerous Liaisons, an old cracked, run-down copy of Romeo and Juliet, and – after a moment of hesitation – her copy of The Secret Garden. Maybe Lena would think it was childish. Maybe she would take one look at the cover, scoff, and tear the pages out of Kara’s book.

It was a risk Kara was willing to take. Everyone needed something beautiful once in a while, and Kara couldn’t think of anything more beautiful than the escapism a children’s book could offer.

She’d also brought a science magazine she’d bought on impulse on her way to the D.E.O. The guards had actually checked that magazine just in case it stated something about how to make a bomb from scratch or something like that.

Kara had resisted the urge to roll her eyes.

If there were a way to create a weapon out of thin air, no version of Lena Luthor would need a second-rate science magazine to let her know how. Lena would’ve probably invented the technique in the first place.

Kara slid the books and the magazine through the metal drawer in Lena’s door and closed it with a hushed _squeak_.

She did it. She could go now.

But somehow, her feet remained firmly planted on the ground. She couldn’t tear her eyes away from Lena just yet.

She allowed herself a brief moment in which she felt safe around a Lena again. Calm, knowing she couldn’t be attacked in any way. Kara supposed it was a bit like watching a lion or a crocodile in a zoo. Trapped, caged animals.

The thought made Kara sad, and she looked away.

Other Lena already had no privacy to begin with in this horrid institution, and now Kara was watching her sleep. It wasn’t alright, and it wasn’t fair to her. So Kara whispered a hushed apology and walked away.

* * *

The first few days, Kara waited.

She didn’t know exactly what she was waiting for, but she was eagerly anticipating something. Some news, some announcement, some new threat or literally anything that could possibly be linked to the Other Lena.

Instead, her week went by painstakingly slowly, and was utterly, _miserably_ devoid of anything exciting. Her days felt longer than ever, working at CatCo. Nia had been reassigned to writing for the fashion column of the magazine, and while Kara was happy that her friend could finally write about the things she loved, it also meant that Nia had to work long hours on the other end of the office, and Kara rarely saw her anymore.

Kara spent her days largely on her own. She felt awkward around William, who tried his best to engage with her, but also kept wanting to blur the line between friends and something more. It was exhausting and made Kara decline his lunch offer multiple times.

So besides the odd rushed morning talks with an exhausted, yet bright-eyed, excited Nia, and some sparse talks with the people from other departments, Kara didn’t really see anyone else. She spent her days cooped up in her office, writing and editing articles, waiting for the D.E.O. to send her a message, to talk to her, to tell her they cracked the code and knew how to send Lena back.

The most exciting message she got was an email from Noonan’s saying her frequent visits to their shop had earned her enough points to get one free drink on her next visit to one of their affiliations.

Kara had barely talked to Alex these last few weeks.

Aside from her check-ups right after the incident with Other Lena, and her nagging about seeing Other Lena, Kara hadn’t spoken to her. Alex had been cooped up in her lab with Brainy to find out everything about Other Lena’s origin, and if it weren’t for some reassuring texts from Kelly accompanied by pictures of Alex eating and sleeping at their apartment, Kara would’ve been convinced her sister hadn’t left her lab in weeks. But so far, all of Alex’s time away hadn’t yielded much. There wasn’t any news, and nothing was happening.

Or so she thought.

Around half-past 3pm on a Friday, exactly one week since she’d seen Other Lena last, Kara was slowly writing down some half-hearted ideas for new articles that might fit into Andrea’s rigid category of ‘acceptable news’ in CatCo. It was useless, because lately, none of her ideas had been deemed interesting by Andrea, and Kara had been given a topic instead.

Kara yawned, resting her head on her left hand, while the other seemed to be making large loops of unintelligible words and lazy doodles that reaffirmed her belief that Friday afternoons were the most unproductive of times. She was tired, the sun was shining through the large window behind her, and all Kara could focus on were the boxes of steaming dumplings she would pick up that night to devour in front of a crappy soap opera with characters she was completely uninterested in.

Those kind of Friday nights were better with Alex there, who would always yell at the TV in-between bites, but since Nia was busy, Kara figured it’d be fine to watch alone too.

And then her laptop made a sudden _ping_ sound.

Kara looked up and turned her laptop towards her.

She had one new email. From LuthorCorp. ~~Demanding~~ asking her to please join them in Mrs. Lena Luthor’s office around 4pm that day.

It was a generic email. Not one personal touch about it. It had clearly been written by one of Lena’s assistants and was nothing less than an order Kara couldn’t refuse.

A small, petulant part of Kara wanted to write an email back saying she had important business that simply couldn’t wait to attend to, but she figured Lena would just have Andrea dismiss her for the day with one phone call, so she refrained.

With a deep sigh, and uncomfortable dread churning in her belly, Kara gathered her stuff, told William she was heading out (and rushed out the door before he could ask her out for drinks that weekend), and took off on foot to LuthorCorp.

* * *

Kara waited.

She’d gone through all of LuthorCorp’s extensive security protocols, went up to Lena’s floor, and was promptly stopped by an assistant – probably the same on who sent out the email anyway – and was told to wait.

So Kara sat on one of the leather chairs outside Lena’s office, listening to the assistant clicking away on her laptop, and the rhythmic ticking of the clock.

Kara was five minutes late, but Lena seemed to be intent on making her wait.

Kara remembered there was a time Lena would literally usher her in while still on a business call with some rich people halfway across the world. Back when Kara was still important enough to Lena to walk in on business meetings.

The intercom on Lena’s assistant’s desk buzzed, and after the assistant briefly picked up the phone and stated a short “of course Miss Luthor,” Kara was guided to Lena’s office.

There was also a time when she could walk into that office as she pleased. Now she needed someone to go with her.

Kara didn’t have the time nor the energy to dwell on just how much times had changed for her. Her heart was beating so fast she could practically feel it in her throat. She was nervous, Lena hadn’t dropped a single clue on what this visit would be about – though Kara had some theories. None of which made her feel particularly hopeful walking into that office.

Lena didn’t look up when Kara walked in.

She was walking around behind her desk, talking into the sleek black phone she’d designed herself.

Lena’s assistant walked ahead of Kara and carefully placed a directory of files on Lena’s desk. Lena barely seemed to notice, not shooting her assistant even the slightest grateful smile, nor did she acknowledge Kara’s presence in the room.

The assistant gestured to Kara to sit down. Kara did, uneasily. She slid down, feeling incredibly small and insignificant.

She felt looked down upon, in every sense of the word. Kara wrapped her arms around her own body and cast her eyes down. She listened on as Lena conducted her phone call.

“Absolutely no problem, Mister Haverford. No, I insist, my brother and I would be honored to host the fundraiser. Yes. No, of course!”

Lena let out a practiced laugh that made Kara scrunch up her nose in dislike. Lena’s business-laugh was all teeth and lipstick but no actual glee, and it always made Kara feel sad to think about how much time Lena had had in her life to practice such a fake laugh.

“I will give my brother your well-wishes. I’m sure he’ll be ecstatic to hear about our agreement. Yes. Then I will see you soon. Yes. All the best.”

Lena’s laugh sparkled in the empty office.

After what felt like forever, though, Lena finished the call, and the smile dropped like a stone. Her expression became cold so quickly that it made Kara’s fear bubble up again.

“Tough call?” Kara attempted weakly.

“You and I need to talk,” Lena cut her off.

Kara gulped and sank down into the chair as if she could melt into it and disappear.

“O-kay,” Kara whispered, but Lena wasn’t waiting for her to reply.

“I got a call from my people at the D.E.O.,” Lena said curtly, sitting down at her desk without sparing Kara a single glance.

“… you have people at the D.E.O.?” Kara asked.

“Of course I do,” Lena said, opening the folder on her desk. “We own it now, don’t we?”

Kara could detect a hint of bitterness in her voice, but whether it was aimed at her, or just at the fact that Lena was forced to work with her brother now, Kara didn’t know.

“Sure,” Kara mumbled, playing with her fingers. “I just thought – ”

“Apparently, you’ve been visiting the fifth dimension clone in the D.E.O.’s cell.”

Lena’s eyes snapped up to meet Kara’s, and it took her by surprise.

“I don’t know what – ”

“I thought I was pretty clear last time we spoke,” Lena said sharply. “I don’t want you to come near her again. In fact, I’m rather sure I explicitly told you to stay away from her.”

A shiver ran down Kara’s spine.

“No,” Lena said coldly, “I didn’t think you would need the reminder, but if you are unwilling to listen, I am more than prepared to revoke your access to the cells as well.”

Kara gulped.

“Am I making myself clear?” Lena asked, raising an eyebrow.

“Yes,” Kara whispered.

“Good. Glad that’s settled.”

_Just like that._

Lena’s attention had already drifted away from Kara and back to the files in front of her.

Kara hadn’t been in the room for more than three minutes – less than one of which she’d spent talking to Lena – and she’d already been forgotten.

“Please tell my assistant to bring in my next appointment.”

Kara nodded, but she didn’t really know why. Lena wasn’t looking at her. A frown was etched in her brow, her mind already miles away from her last conversation.

Kara took in Lena’s stern features; the hard line of her mouth, her narrowed eyes, the lines in her forehead.

Kara slowly stood up. Picked her bag up from the floor. Lena didn’t react. Didn’t utter a goodbye.

Kara opened her mouth, but rethought that idea. She pushed her chair gently under the table. She wanted to turn around and leave – she’d be so much safer back at her office, away from Lena’s cold words and cruel indifference to her presence…

“I can’t though.”

Lena’s hand that was flicking her pen up and down, froze. Her eyes were trained on the papers before her, almost like she hadn’t heard Kara. But she had, of course. She slowly raised her head to look at Kara, and Kara could die.

A voice in her head was screaming at her to get out, to let Lena be, and to just _stop_ antagonizing a woman who could break her down so easily.

“I’m sorry?” Lena asked icily. “I must’ve misheard you just know.”

Kara gulped again and dug her nails into the palms of her hands.

“Because it sounded like you were saying – ”

“I’m not going to stop seeing her,” Kara interrupted her.

Great, she thought. Interrupting Lena in her own office. That should definitely earn her some points.

Lena dropped her pen and stood up straight. With her insufferingly tall heels, she easily matched Kara in height, though her anger made her seem so much taller. Like she could tower over her if she wanted.

“Please explain to me,” Lena said slowly, “what your train of thought is on this. Because you are getting dangerously close to getting kicked out of this office.”

“I understand,” Kara said, though her voice wavered just a little. “And I understand why you don’t want me to see her.”

The dark look on Lena’s face didn’t change, but Kara bravely – though the voice in her head would call it _foolishly_ – continued.

“I know that it must feel terrible to know I’m talking to… your copy. I know I felt awful when I realized people were talking to my clone last year too.”

Lena didn’t move a muscle, though a vein in her forehead started to become alarmingly more pronounced the longer Kara went on talking.

“I know you must think I’m doing it to spite you,” Kara said softly. “But I’m not. I know you see her as your clone, but she’s also a person.”

“She’s a killer,” Lena spat out. “She doesn’t deserve a thing.”

“She deserves some humanity,” Kara argued. “I’m not – Lena… I’m not talking to her to make you mad, I just want – ”

“What, Kara?” Lena spat out. “What do you want to do? Play pretend? Role play with her?”

“Lena,” Kara exclaimed, “of course not, I – ”

“It seems to me you want to talk to me without actually talking to me,” Lena said coldly. “It seems to me you’re using my clone,” she spat out the word like a curse, “to vent about your frustrations. Yet you conveniently forget she’s a murderer who would stop at nothing to slit your throat!”

Kara instinctively recoiled.

“I don’t believe that,” she whispered.

Lena let out a dry laugh.

“You think she wouldn’t?”

Kara tried not to picture the glee in Other Lena’s voice when they’d discussed murdering her.

“I believe she hasn’t been given a lot of kindness in her life,” Kara tried to argue softly instead. “I believe she hasn’t had the chance to be kind because no one ever extended her that favor.”

“Don’t tell me you actually believe treating her nicely will change anything about her?” Lena asked disbelievingly. “Even you can’t be that stupid. She’s a monster. There’s no talking to her!”

Kara didn’t say anything. Lena scoffed in disbelief at the sight.

“Even if she responded to a little love and humanity,” Lena mocked her, “do you really think she’d want it from _you_?”

That stung.

“Why are you so quick to write her off?” Kara asked. “You, most of all, should understand that love and compassion can help transform people.”

“I used to think that,” Lena said coldly. “But as you very well know, people’s intentions aren’t pure. There’s never just love and compassion. And even if there was; she wouldn’t want it.”

“You don’t know that,” Kara said. “She’s been through so many awful things, I – I can’t leave her like that. Not while we can still do something – ”

“There’s nothing to do for her,” Lena said harshly. “We just need to send her back home and forget she was ever here!”

Lena’s face was contorted into a rage Kara had only gotten to know very recently. A rage that made Kara feel so infinitely sad.

“I don’t think I can do that,” she whispered.

Lena scoffed.

“I’ve met her, Lena,” Kara argued. “I’ve talked to her, I’ve seen her – I… I think she’s hurting, and I think she doesn’t know how to express it in a healthy w-”

“And she wants to express it to you?” Lena mocked her. “She wants to talk about her tears and her mean little mommy and brother to you?”

Kara clenched her jaw.

The belittlement was just… too much. She was Supergirl. She had done impossible things that people had thought she couldn’t handle. They’d said she was weak, scared, not as powerful as her cousin… and she’d proven them all wrong. And now, even Lena was doubting her.

“I don’t know if she’ll want to see me,” Kara said coolly, after a beat. “But I know she’s a person, rotting away in a cell in a world she doesn’t know, surrounded by people she doesn’t trust. I know how that feels, and I can’t just stand by when it would be so easy to help her.”

“Oh, please,” Lena rolled her eyes.

“What?”

“She’s not some innocent victim, thrown into this universe against her will, Kara,” Lena spat out. “She’s a cunning woman whose only goal was to come here and destroy you. Don’t try and turn her into something she’s not just so you can play pretend with her!”

“I’m not playing pretend!” Kara shouted. “I know she’s not you! I’m not trying to make her into you either! Have you considered that if it weren’t for my wish, Other Lena would never have turned into the person she is now?”

“What?”

“If I hadn’t – ”

Kara shook her head. Gripped the strap of her bag a little tighter in her hand.

“It doesn’t matter.”

Silence fell over them. Kara could almost see Lena’s brain processing her words. It made her want to look away, angry at herself for slipping up.

“You think it’s your fault,” Lena said. She sounded calmer and more reasonable than she had the entire conversation.

Kara shrugged, uncomfortably.

“She certainly seems to think so.”

“Yes,” Lena agreed. “She does. Because she’s a sociopath who has to find someone to blame for her pain. And since Lex and Lillian are out of the picture…”

“It falls on me,” Kara whispered.

“Exactly. While you made some _very_ questionable decisions, Kara, her becoming the evil bitch she is, has very little to do with you, and everything with Lex and Lillian.”

It was the kindest thing Lena had said to her in months.

“That might be true,” Kara whispered. “But I made the wish. I asked Mxy to erase me from your – _her_ life. If it weren’t for that wish – ”

“You’re not wrong about that,” Lena said, and Kara flinched. “But that just came to show how many times I’ve been on the brink of death over the years.”

“What?”

“Kara,” Lena sighed. “If anything had gone differently in my life, I could’ve died ten times over at the least. I’ve been in danger constantly ever since I was four years old and got adopted into the richest family in the US.”

She stared into Kara’s eyes, stormy seas entrancing her completely.

“If I had taken a step aside when that woman shot at the press conference a couple of years back, the bullet could’ve hit me instead of James,” Lena said matter-of-factly. “If Morgan Edge had cut off the plane’s microphone years back, then I wouldn’t have been able to send the S.O.S. message that alerted you to my location, and I would’ve gone down with the plane.”

Her eyebrows went up.

“Life is a series of chances and coincidences, Supergirl. There is no higher power at play here. Things happen or don’t happen at random, and they can have gigantic consequences. You learned that the hard way.”

Kara looked down.

“Though in all fairness,” Lena said, and Kara dared to look up. “Even I could’ve told you that a world in which I hadn’t met you wouldn’t have been a better world.”

That surprised Kara.

She looked at Lena, trying to decipher those words, but the moment had passed, and Lena had moved on. Lena sat back down at her desk, somehow still exuding more power and confidence than Kara, still standing up. She flipped through the files on her desk like her conversation with Kara was over and done with.

“You won’t see her again, Supergirl, and that’s final. She’s a danger and a menace, and it would be counterproductive for you to keep meeting with her.”

She picked up her pen and granted Kara a final, disinterested look.

“I get that you feel guilty. Visiting her won’t change anything, you’d do well to remember that.”

Kara wasn’t sure whether Lena was talking about herself or the Other Lena now.

Regardless, she didn’t agree.

Kara scraped the last of her courage together and said:

“It’s not up to you.”

“I beg your pard – ”

“It’s not up to you,” Kara said calmly. “You can hate it, and you can hate me, but you are not allowed to keep me from seeing her. She doesn’t see anyone except those guards. You aren’t in charge. Not completely.”

“Supergirl,” Lena said icily, hands flat on her desk, “if I were you, I’d be very careful about – ”

“You can’t kick me out of the D.E.O., Lena,” Kara said simply. “I’m Supergirl. You need me there. Even Lex has said as much. You can’t kick me out of the same institution that makes money based on my being there.”

Kara watched Lena grow angrier and angrier as the realization that Kara was right dawned on her.

Then it became very, very quiet in the room. Lena just… looked at her, while Kara’s eyes nervously darted around the room, trying to estimate whether she needed to think up some exit strategies.

Just when Kara wanted to ramble off some weak excuse of needing to get to work, Lena spoke up.

“Fine,” Lena said through clenched teeth. “Do whatever you want. Talk to the psychopath. Pretend she’s me for all I care. Do whatever you need to do to assuage your guilt. If that’s what you need to move on with your life – ”

She gestured broadly.

“Be my fucking guest.”

The venom dripped from her words, and Kara knew she’d made Lena furious.

Kara was slowly breaking the last ties she still had with Lena, and it was crushing her. One by one, they were ripped away, until one day, Kara knew, they’d be complete strangers to each other. Kara didn’t know if she’d be able to deal with that day. 

“I understand,” she whispered, and with a last curt nod, turned around to walk away.

“She’ll try to kill you again,” Lena said softly – though they both knew she could hear it. “Even if you think she won’t. She doesn’t think of you as a person, not really. She wants to kill you. And you just might let her.”

Kara swallowed the lump in her throat and didn’t look back.

She strode out of the office. There was nothing else to say. Lena didn’t want her there, and Kara realized with some dread, that she didn’t want to be there anymore either.

Lena’s assistant actually looked up in surprise when Kara left the office with strong steps, the breeze she caused blowing through the loose papers on the poor assistant’s desk.

The woman looked at her with big eyes.

Kara took a deep breath and shook her head.

“She’s ready for her next meeting,” she muttered, and then she walked out.

* * *

On her way to CatCo, Kara got a phonecall.

“Alex,” she said curtly. “If you’re calling to yell at me – ”

“I’m not,” she said, but she didn’t sound happy at all.

“Did you find a way to open the portal?”

“No,” Alex said, and Kara could practically hear her sister grinding her teeth. “Lena wants to talk to you.”

Kara rolled her eyes.

“Yes, I’m well-aware. I was just there.”

“What?” Alex asked confused. “How?”

“I just left LuthorCorp,” Kara said, sticking her hand out to catch the bus. “How else?”

Alex sighed on the other end of the line.

“That’s not what I meant,” she said darkly. “It’s not Lena I’m talking about. It’s the other one. The clone. She’s been asking for you.”

The words shot through Kara and made her stop right on the pavement. She missed the busdriver giving her a look, and she missed him giving up and driving off.

Because Other Lena wanted to talk to her.

“Kara?”

“When can I come?”

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Hi guys!
> 
> Sorry about the wait!  
> And sorry for posting today of all days. I'm really sad about this show ending, and I know it'll be so weird when it's all over. Lots of love for you guys. And a happy, happy birthday to Kara Danvers, the amazing alien who's brought us so much joy over the years!
> 
> And I really hope you all enjoy this chapter.  
> Let me know what you thought either here or on [my blog!](https://thingsanddreamsandstuff.tumblr.com)  
> I hope you're all safe and happy.


	5. Chapter 5

Kara walked through the long hall leading to Other Lena’s cell with a racing heart. Adrenaline, fear, and _excitement_ raced through her veins. She almost skidded to a stop before the familiar cell.

“You wanted to see me?”

It came out a little too eager, and just a tad out of breath, and Kara would mind if Other Lena hadn’t chosen that exact moment to look up from her magazine and smirk at her. It was so completely dazzling and thrilling to see Other Lena smile at her in a way that didn’t quietly evoke Kara’s fight or flight instincts at all that it made Kara’s breath hitch in her throat. Other Lena looked like she could feel Kara’s excitement radiating off of her – and she enjoyed it.

“Hi,” Lena said with a raised eyebrow.

“Oh,” Kara blushed. “Hi. Sorry. You, ehm, you asked to see me?”

Lena chuckled and closed her magazine, earmarking the page she was on.

“I did. I wanted to thank you for all of this.”

She motioned at the books, neatly stacked on the floor beside her bed.

“I thought maybe Director Danvers had finally taken a shine to me,” Lena smiled coyly, “but the guards told me I had you to thank for all of this. So thank you.”

“You’re welcome,” Kara smiled shyly. “They said you were bored.”

Lena scoffed. She leaned back against the wall.

“That’s an understatement. I think I might be losing my mind in here,” she said. “There is absolutely nothing to do here. I can’t even go outside for a walk.”

“Yeah, that might be because they’re scared you’re going to kill everyone,” Kara whispered.

Lena shrugged.

“Fair,” she admitted. “But still. Observing the same four guards who bring me food can only kill so many minutes in my day. And they won’t even talk to me. No fun at all.”

Kara actually felt bad for her.

“So what do you do all day?” she asked carefully. “You know, if… if there’s nothing to do around here?”

Lena blew the air out of her mouth.

“I’ve designed some prototypes for robots? Came up with a new motorized system for my next generation HOPE-bots. That sort of stuff.”

Kara thought it best not to think about how Lena was so absolutely convinced she’d be able to create her new robots in the future. That she still had a certain world to get back to.

“I don’t see any blueprints,” Kara said, looking around the tiny cell. “Where did you write them down?”

Lena smiled and brought one finger up to tap against the side of her head.

“No way.”

Kara’s mouth fell open and Other Lena’s smile widened at the sight.

“You drew all those plans up in your head? With no pen or paper or anything?”

“So surprised,” Other Lena teased. “Is the other me not as intellectually gifted?”

Kara’s eyes widened.

“No!” she said quickly. “I mean yes! I mean, she’s really smart! The smartest! I didn’t mean to imply – ”

Other Lena chuckled. “Relax,” she said. “It was just a joke. No biggie.”

“Oh.”

Other Lena shook her head, but she was still smiling, which Kara took as a win. And she was _joking_. With her! That had to be progress. Or maybe Kara was just delusional. Either way, she liked this much better.

“Yes, I drew the plans up in my head,” Other Lena mercifully continued, letting Kara and her red blush off the hook. “But that’s only fun for so long. I want to create. There’s only so much theory a person can handle before they’re just itching to pick up the tools and start working. You know?”

Kara nodded slowly.

“I think so. Same as writing an article, I suppose. You can think about your story all day until you have a laptop with you to jot it down, you’ll feel like you have nothing but a slippery thought in your head. You want to create it, put it into existence.”

A genuine smile spread over Other Lena’s lips. It was devoid of any mockery, any coyness, or flirtation whatsoever. It was a Lena smile. A real one. It only lasted a second, but it was there – Kara would swear to it on her potstickers, even if the Other Lena would never admit it.

It was gone as soon as it appeared, instantly replaced by a knowing smirk.

“So you’re a reporter then?”

_Nuts._

Other Lena looked smug, watching with great delight as Kara squirmed uncomfortably in front of her.

“Ah,” Kara’s hand rubbed her neck and she looked at the floor. “Oh boy. Yeah. Ehm, yes, I wasn’t supposed to tell you that.”

Other Lena chuckled.

“I figured.”

“I’d appreciate it if you didn’t tell Alex – Director Danvers. She’d give me a pretty hard time.”

“My lips are sealed.”

The words were almost a command for Kara’s eyes to drop down just a little to look at Other Lena’s lips. They were slightly chapped from the lack of fresh air and the absence of her favorite lip scrub, but Kara almost didn’t notice. All she could see was how pink Lena’s lips were. A pale shade of pink that still exuded something warm and elegant. The prettiest shade of pink. The kind that –

Kara quickly looked away, ears burning. She had no business looking at Lena’s lips like that. She had no business thinking about Lena’s lips at all! She didn’t know what had come over her, but Kara had to snap out of it. She just hoped Other Lena hadn’t noticed.

She shot a furtive look over at the woman but was relieved to find Other Lena looking away from her, her thoughts somewhere else entirely.

“So, ehm,” Kara awkwardly broke the silence, wringing her pale hands. She didn’t know if she should stay or if the Other Lena wanted her to go now. That she’d said all she’d wanted to say.

Other Lena’s pale blue-green eyes fell on her and Kara felt that shock go through her again. The shot of adrenaline that practically _begged_ her to stay.

“Did you… like the books?” she asked hesitantly.

Other Lena smiled again, the corner of her lips pointed upwards in amusement.

“I did.”

“Really?”

Kara could feel herself light up, relief washing over her instantly.

“You’re surprised?”

“No,” Kara said, but she had to bite her lip to keep from smiling, giving her away.

Lena shook her head, smiling. It made Kara’s heart grow four sizes. She could feel it beating erratically in her chest.

“Which ones did you read?” Kara asked.

“Oh, I read everything.”

“Wait, what?” Kara shook her head. “I gave them to you four days ago!”

“I tried to pace myself!” Lena defended herself. “Like I said, there’s literally nothing to do here. I couldn’t put anything down.”

“No, no,” Kara let out a disbelieving laugh. “I’m glad to hear it! Kind of worried – did you sleep at all?”

“I did! I slept and I read. As you can see, my day to day operations are _extremely_ riveting.”

Kara bowed her head, suppressing a smile.

“So you enjoyed them then? The books?”

“I did. You have good taste.”

Kara almost swooned at that.

“Oh.”

“Although – ”

Kara quickly looked up to see Lena pick up Kara’s old copy of _The Secret Garden_ from the stack of books beside her bed.

“I have to ask. A children’s book?”

Kara blushed.

“I liked it,” she said. “I thought you might too.”

Lena hummed, eying the cover with a critical eye. It was a pretty one, too. Kara had found it in a vintage bookshop and had bought it solely for the artwork. She had her own copy back in Midvale, but when her eye had fallen on the cover in the bookshop, she knew she had to have it. It immediately drew her attention. The gorgeous vines on the cover, all in different shades of green, with colorful wildflowers, leaves, and plants and the tiny silhouette of a young girl standing before it… Kara had used her precious dollars she’d made working at Noonan’s between Uni classes on a book she already had, but seeing it in Lena’s hand made her believe it was the purchase of the century.

“It has its charm I suppose,” she said after a while. “If you can overlook the author’s clear reverie of colonialism and English superiority.”

Kara blinked at her.

“I – yeah.”

Lena shrugged. “I liked it well enough. I’d read it as a child once but can’t remember having felt particularly entranced by it. Maybe it’s cause I grew up on the Luthor estate, around all these luscious, big gardens, and they didn’t hold a fraction of the magic the book talks about. They were just… there. An extension of my mother’s views on order and appearance. It kind of… made the book seem more childish than it was,” Lena said.

“I could see that,” Kara said, trying not to sound too pitying.

If Other Lena was opening up to her in a non-aggressive, humane way, then Kara should cherish it. She had no doubts that the other woman could shut all of this down in seconds if Kara’s reaction wasn’t to her liking, so Kara would make sure not to give her any reason to.

“I guess I just liked it because it was a story about kids learning how to be happy. There was so much hope in it. I liked that.”

Lena regarded her curiously, tilting her head just the slightest bit. Kara looked down, suddenly embarrassed by it all. Maybe she shouldn’t have given Lena a children’s book. Maybe she should’ve thought twice about what she could give Lena, and how it would reflect on her.

“I suppose,” Lena hummed after a while. “It is a remarkable psychological profile of how grief functions in the lives of children. Even if the children are only able to heal and to be truly happy when they’re immersed in the lush, unadulterated nature of Britain.”

Kara couldn’t help but smile at that.

“Alright,” she said, “I get the hint. No more colonialism-glorifying children’s books for you.”

“So you’re planning on providing me with more books, are you?”

Kara blushed, biting down a smile.

“I don’t know,” she said. “Would you like me to?”

Lena didn’t say anything. She just smiled that knowing smile that made Kara feel so hot and scrutinized and uncomfortable all at once. Kara scraped her throat uncomfortably, trying to get out of the spot she was put in (or had put herself in, but that was beside the point.)

“Do you usually read much?” she asked, fighting off the heat rising on her cheeks.

Mercifully, Lena allowed the change of subjects. She folded her hands on her lap and moved to sit more comfortably on the neatly made bed.

“No, I haven’t the time. Well,” she arched an eyebrow. “ _Hadn’t_ might be more correct, I’d say.”

“Right.”

Kara felt awkward.

“Sorry.”

Lena shrugged. “It is what it is. I’ll get out of here eventually. Until then, I can kill some time reading. It’s fun enough. I used to read a lot more before I became CEO.”

“What did you read?”

“The classics, mostly. The Library at the Luthor mansion exclusively held works written before the 21st Century,” she teased.

Kara chuckled.

“That’s very in character for them.”

“Extremely. So I was glad to find you brought me some recently published books too.”

Kara tried not to preen.

“What did you like?”

“ _My Year of Rest and Relaxation_? Loved it.”

She picked up the book with the artful cover of an annoyed-looking woman draped in an elegant white tunic. Lena smiled at the cover, almost like she’d forgotten Kara was even in the room.

“She was so bitchy,” Lena said wondrously. “So mean and unlikable. I love it when women are written like that. And the catch at the end! I just – wow – I loved it.”

Kara loved seeing Lena like this. If it hadn’t been for Lena looking up at her, her smile dimming only slightly at the sight of Kara, she would’ve gladly shut her mouth to hear Lena praise the book some more.

“I’m glad,” Kara whispered. “It was a gift from a friend. I thought you might like it too.”

“Well,” Lena said up a little straighter, regaining some sense of decorum, the pride, and power she still held, even from her cell. “I did. And the other one? _Conversations with friends_? Wonderful! Such complex characters! So unironically modern.”

Kara’s smile only broadened with each word coming out of Lena’s mouth.

“I figured you might like it.”

“How so?” Lena didn’t look up from the book she’d grabbed off the stack near her bed.

Kara shrugged.

“It’s set in Dublin, right? I thought, I don’t know, it might… make you feel a connection? I don’t know.”

Lena’s eyes snapped up to look at Kara, narrowing just the slightest bit in suspicion.

“You don’t talk much about Ireland,” Kara said. “The other – this world’s Lena. I just wanted to give you something that wasn’t so connected to National City or Metropolis. Something more… home-y?”

Lena paused for a bit. It made Kara nervous.

“I only lived in Ireland for four years,” she finally said. “I went back for holidays, and for one semester at Trinity College. That’s it. I wouldn’t say I’ve got a profound link with the country left.”

“I know,” Kara said quickly. “I know, I just… never mind.”

“It’s fine,” Lena said. “I just didn’t know _you_ knew.”

Kara nodded.

“Sorry.”

“That’s not something to apologize for.”

It was clear then, that Lena was still very much convinced there were other, more pressing things that Kara did have to apologize for. But Kara didn’t want the conversation to take that turn. She would hold on to the slimmest thread of normalcy she could find if it would allow her to talk to the Other Lena like they were just… friends. Acquaintances. Anything but the sworn enemies the Other Lena was so convinced they were. So Kara quickly changed the subject.

“Do you know any Irish?”

“Not a lot,” Lena shrugged. “Some words and phrases.”

She let her eyes drift over Kara.

“Did you know your name resembles an old Irish word?”

“It does?”

Lena hummed.

“ _Caragh,_ ” she said. “It means beloved.”

The blush that reached Kara’s ears felt more like a blazing fire than a feminine hue, and she really hoped Lena didn’t catch it.

“Oh,” she whispered, a crack in her voice. “That’s… that’s nice.”

Lena shrugged, studying the books on her bed. The colorful covers contrasted starkly with the white sheets of Lena’s bed, one small beautiful detail in the dreadful room. The colors seemed to reflect onto Lena, though, Kara mused. She looked much more lively than when she’d last seen her. There was a happy blush on the apples of her cheeks, that at least made her look a little healthier, a little happier than before. Her eyes sparkled in that special way of hers that was usually reserved for movie nights with Kara, thinking of new inventions, and eating guilt-free ice cream straight from the pint.

“Well, I’m glad you liked them,” Kara said. “The books.”

Lena nodded, her hand stroking the orange cover of her _Conversations with Friends_ copy almost gently.

“I did,” she said, almost to herself. “I really did.”

Kara nodded, looked down at her phone, and realized with a pang in her heart that she had to leave. Andrea would kill her if she came in late for a third time this week. She was already on thin ice for missing a meeting while she was stuck at the D.E.O. with “pneumonia” as Alex’s falsified doctor’s note kindly indicated. Andrea had eyed it with a dirty glare when Kara gave it to her as if Kara had personally offended her by catching a cold in the middle of the magazine’s new rollout.

“I have to go,” Kara said. “But I can take the books with me since you’re done?”

Lena clutched the books a little closer to her chest and looked almost affronted that Kara would dare take them away before she caught herself.

“Actually,” she said, raising her chin in that way she did to look just a little more in control of her feelings. “If you can miss them for a few more days, I have some passages I’d like to reread. Just because there’s not much else to do and all…”

She almost dared Kara to laugh at her. Dared her to comment on Lena’s primal need to have _something_ to take her mind of the awfulness that was being stuck in a D.E.O.’s prison. Lena didn’t know that Kara could understand all too well.

“Keep them as long as you like,” Kara smiled. “I’ll try to come by with some other books soon.”

Lena froze.

“You will?”

“Sure,” Kara shrugged, picking her bag off from the floor and draping the strap over her shoulder. “If you want.”

Lena clenched her jaw like she was fighting herself over something. Kara could see her fingers clutch the spine. She only did that when she was nervous. Kara waited.

“Supergirl…”

She paused. A fraction of the coldness that Kara had grown to associate with her returned, her eyes steelier and more guarded than before.

“You know this doesn’t change anything?” she paused. “I still plan on getting out of here. Executing my plan. You know that. Handing me some books and talking to me is fine – but it won’t change a thing, and it would be entirely masochistic to think otherwise.”

Kara could barely suppress a smile. Her phone buzzed in her pocket, Andrea no doubt raging on the other end.

“I know,” Kara said. “I’ll come back soon.”

She didn’t wait for Lena’s response, and walked out through the door of the hall, feeling lighter than she had in ages.

* * *

Kara bought more books. A whole lot of them.

When she was walking around town, she started keeping an eye out for flea markets, book markets, sales in bookstores. She’d bought the loveliest second-hand copy of _Normal People_ – from the same author as _Conversations with Friends_ – a collection of assorted poems in _Milk and Honey,_ and President Marsden’s biography, which she definitely read before she handed it over to Lena.

Alex frowned whenever they would walk around town, and Kara would interrupt their conversation to dash inside a tiny bookstore “just to look around real quick.” She’d get annoyed when Kara would halt in front of a flea market right before they could reach Noonan’s “just to check what the lady’s selling, Alex, please!”

No one got it, really. Alex especially didn’t get it. Kara could tell that she was growing frustrated with Kara’s dreamy, ungrounded attitude, but she couldn’t help it. The Other Lena was always on her mind. But Alex wasn’t mean about it. Instead, she just looked at Kara with pity. Like she thought Kara might’ve finally bumped against the limits of her own sanity and had fallen right off the deep end.

Alex tried to talk to her about it a couple of times, but Kara had always brushed it off. She knew Alex was linking it to everything that had happened with Lena, and maybe she was right. Maybe this was some elaborate coping mechanism to get Kara through the day without thinking of how her best friend _hated_ her. But Kara didn’t want to think about it like that. There was Lena and then there was Other Lena. And that’s what she would tell Alex before Alex looked at her like that again – with that lost, pitying sadness that made Kara want to snap at her and walk away. She didn’t, but she couldn’t say it wasn’t getting tiring to have the same conversation a million different times.

Nia was by far the kindest about it, hesitantly offering to check if she’d had any books or magazines left in her own closets – Kara had accepted a handful of fashion magazines and a book on French couture, which Lena surprisingly enjoyed – but it was clear she didn’t understand why Kara would go to all this trouble. Especially for someone like Other Lena. For someone like Lena.

Kara didn’t know if Nia was hurt that Kara was still so ardently fighting for a friendship she deemed lost. If maybe she felt like Kara put Lena above all her other friendships, all the other relationships she still had to maintain. Kara tried to make sure to set aside as much time as possible for her and Nia to just talk and joke around, but it wasn’t the same as with Lena. She didn’t want it to be either. If Nia felt demoted as Kara’s friend, though, she didn’t show it. She just helpfully placed some magazines on Kara’s desk with an unsure smile and a promise to keep an eye out for anything else she could find that Other Lena might enjoy.

So Kara thanked her profusely and added the magazine to the piles of books and magazines she’d already collected. She tried to pass by Lena’s cell about once every three to four days, in which Lena had usually had the time to read whatever Kara had brought her.

True to her word, Kara didn’t ask to take anything back home with her, and Lena didn’t offer. Her cell slowly started filling up with stacks of books with new and withered spines, old essays and biographies, scientific magazines, and old CatCo fashion editions. She often came by on her way to work, hastily putting them through the small hatch on the side of Lena’s cell before the woman had even woken up.

One time, Kara had put the books down right when Lena was waking up. She looked adorable all tired and groggy and so, _so_ familiar – a sight Kara knew so well from all their movie nights and parties that had ended in sleepovers – that Kara almost couldn’t bear it. It had taken everything inside of Kara not to stay and talk, but Andrea _had_ already been dangerously close to an aneurysm the last time Kara had spent her time with Other Lena and had run late for the investor’s meeting. She just couldn’t afford to stay. Weekends were filled with deadlines and Supergirl-ing, so she hadn’t seen much of the Other Lena – or her Lena, for that matter – in about two weeks.

And Kara missed her.

She couldn’t quite understand why or how, but she found herself thinking of the Other Lena at random times during her day. She’d think of her when she saw a fun cover for a magazine. She thought of her at lunch, wondering what Lena was eating – could she eat after all the experiments performed on her? She thought of Lena when it least suited her, in the middle of conversations, or when time would drag by horrifically slowly at work. She would think of Other Lena, what she was doing, and if she was keeping herself entertained with the endless supply of books and magazines Kara had rattled up.

Kara missed her.

She missed the adrenaline and the joy that came with interacting with her. She missed the dangerous dance of jokes and thinly-veiled threats and she couldn’t cope. A part of her worried she might be putting too much pressure on a powder-keg of what could barely be described as a relationship – all out of grief over her friendship with the real Lena.

Kara refused to think about it like that. Lena didn’t need her and didn’t want to see her. She’d made that crystal clear. But the Other Lena – the one who hated her more than anyone else on the planet – _she_ needed her. Whether the woman would admit it or not, she was dependent on Kara’s steady supply of books to keep her going, and more than that: Kara was there to be kind to Lena in a way that she wasn’t used to. The D.E.O. was cold and lonely, and Lena didn’t see anyone besides the guards, who Kara knew could be allergic to any kind of positive human interaction. So Kara made it her duty to be kind, and to send Lena whatever love she could.

So, on a useless Wednesday in which she hadn’t managed to write anything sensible that could be published because her mind was just… elsewhere, Kara decided to give in. She missed Lena. She hadn’t talked to her in two weeks, and she needed to see her.

The second the clock announced her freedom, Kara dashed from her desk, crossing CatCo at record speed before heading home. Kara didn’t pause once she’d reached her apartment; she just grabbed the neatly stacked pile of stuff she’d collected – already arranged on her dinner table – and shoved it in her bag.

She almost skipped out the door, beaming at her neighbors in the hallway, and closing the door with a smile.

She was going to see Lena.

* * *

“Supergirl.”

Lena looked pleased to see her. She sat up straight on the bed, book on her lap and the familiar smirk on her face.

“Finally brave enough to face me while I’m awake again?”

Kara chuckled.

“Sorry I haven’t been around much, work has been crazy,” Kara said, dropping her bag on the floor. “Deadlines, meetings… you know the drill.”

“Yes,” Lena said dryly. “As you can see I’m absolutely swamped myself.”

She gestured around the room, where colorful piles of books and magazines filled up the space under and around her bed. Kara bit back a smile.

“Sorry.”

“Don’t be,” Lena smiled. “I’ve been keeping myself busy.”

“Ah! Speaking of which…”

Kara almost laughed out loud at the way Lena’s face lit up when Kara opened her bag. The way she couldn’t contain her excitement when Kara pulled out more books.

“You’ve found more books?” Lena asked, unable to keep the unbound delight out of her voice.

“I did! I think I’ve been to literally every bookshop in National City,” Kara joked. “At this point, I think they might be putting books aside from me.”

Lena grinned, eyes firmly glued to the pile in Kara’s hands. She stood up as Kara walked around the cell to the hatch through which she could hand Lena the books. Kara opened the little door, ready to place her books on the metal tray when she caught a flash of pale hands right before her – and froze.

Kara looked up, and through the glass wall of Lena’s cell, found herself face-to-face with the woman, closer than they’d been in weeks. The closest since their last confrontation. Kara was looking straight into Lena’s green eyes – the woman staring right back at her. Kara just knew she was thinking the same thing.

Kara was within reach. If Lena was quick enough, she could grab hold of Kara’s hand. She could grab her.

Kara’s breath hitched in her throat, a miserable pang of fear settling low in her stomach. Logically, she knew Lena couldn’t actually get to her, at least not enough to hurt her, but Kara could feel the anxiety taking over. She had superpowers. She could escape. As far as she was aware, Lena’s chest was carefully covered so that she couldn’t hurt anyone else.

But Lena was just staring at her, hands hovering near the open hatch, and Kara couldn’t tell whether her hands were ready to take the books or reach out to claw her eyes out. Her eyebrow was raised just slightly like she was daring Kara to make a move. It made Kara tremble all over. Her fingers were clenched tightly around her books, frozen and painful. Kara felt nauseous. Her heartbeat picked up, humming in her chest. The short distance between her hands and the hatch suddenly seemed like an immeasurably long space for her to cross.

“Did you change your mind?”

Kara looked at her. Lena sported a teasing smile, but her eyes were serious – guarded. Like she knew what was going through Kara’s brain right at that moment.

Kara let out a shuddering nervous laugh – a white cloud forming on the glass before her.

Lena could kill her. She could conceivably hurt her. Kara could almost imagine the green lines forming on Lena’s skin transferring over to her and poisoning her and –

“No,” she whispered, “no, I – ”

She stopped when she saw it. A beam of light on the crown of Lena’s head, so inexplicably casual and mundane that –

“Lena,” she waited, almost wondering whether it would be rude to even ask. Lena’s eyebrows knitted together in confusion. “Do… do you dye your hair?”

Her fear momentarily died down as she noticed the uneven colors between the top of Lena’s head, and the dark ends she was more familiar with. It was so unexpectantly normal, so human, that for a moment it was all Kara could focus on.

“Hmm? Oh,” Lena’s hand reached up and touched the light brown roots of her hair, a couple of shades lighter than the rest of her dark hair. Subtle, but definitely noticeable. It was a warmer shade of brown, with a potential to get a golden glow in the summer, Kara could just feel it.

It made the image of the harsh Metallo Lena fade away. From the soft blush that appeared on her cheeks to the way her hand unconsciously found its way to the top of her head, like the roots were something she had to hide. It was just so genuinely human, so personal and so insignificant that it changed everything. It took all the bad away and left a soft version of the woman she knew in its wake.

“Yes.” Lena brushed the roots with her fingers. “I do. Is it that bad? I can’t tell. My vanity is being kept at bay by my inability to see the state of my hair without any mirrors around,” she said, rolling her eyes self-depreciatingly.

“No, no,” Kara said quickly, “it looks nice. I was just surprised. I didn’t know.”

Lena smiled a lopsided smile.

“I usually have it done at a salon after business hours. It’s a pretty well-kept secret.”

“I’ll keep my mouth closed then.”

“Please.”

Kara’s shoulders lowered slightly, the tension draining away at the sight of something so mundane, something so human as dyeing one’s hair. Lena’s hair.

“Why do you dye it?”

Lena shrugged. “Why does anyone do anything? I’ve been doing it since I was a teenager. It looks good, makes me look stronger, more powerful. More impressive. And it looks good,” she added with a smirk.

Kara hummed. She couldn’t disagree.

“Now that we’ve settled that,” Lena’s eyes glanced down to the books in Kara’s hands. “Do you think you’d still like to hand me those books then?”

Kara looked down at the books in her clenched hands and then back to Lena.

“Yeah,” she whispered. “I think so.”

Lena didn’t move, steadfast, gauging each of Kara’s move with unflinching eyes. Like she was checking just how brave Supergirl really was. And Kara refused to disappoint.

She slid the books through the metal opening, hovering over the metal tray on which she usually put them down. This time, though, there was no need. Lena’s hands patiently waited until Kara got close enough to hand them over. When she finally did, Lena’s hands took hold of the pile. Her fingers brushed against Kara’s, and Kara looked up with a start.

It was only a brief moment, and it could barely be described as even a touch. But Kara felt it. The light brush of Lena’s finger against hers, cold in a way she could almost feel. Her breath hitched, and her eyes burned when they met Lena’s again. Lena just _stared,_ unflinching _._

The books transferred hands and the touch fell away as quickly as it had started. As soon as Lena had a hold of her books, Kara pulled her hands away like she’d been burned. Her heart was racing. She was shaking on her feet.

“Thank you,” Lena said.

“You’re welcome.”

Kara’s voice was hoarse, but though Lena smiled at the sound, she didn’t say anything. Instead, she looked down on the stack of books in her hands and quickly started scanning the covers.

“For the record,” Kara said softly, heart beating in her chest when Lena looked up at her. “I think it looks pretty.”

Lena looked at Kara with a hint of surprise before she smiled a coy smile and walked back towards her bed.

“What have you brought me today?” she muttered, a smile on her face as she went to sit back down on her bed.

Kara walked back around the cell and sat down, leaning against the wall.

“Some more philosophical work,” Kara said. “A young-adult novel I thought you might like. Also, the latest CatCo issue.”

“Batwoman reveals herself as a lesbian,” Lena read aloud. “Her exclusive interview with Kara Danvers.”

A smirk spread across her face.

“Well that’s one mystery solved then. Tell me, is it crossing a reporter’s ethical code of conduct to interview the friends she works with?”

Kara shook her head and laughed.

“Maybe,” she admitted. “I try not to think about it too much. Though it does make for some awkward interviews when I have to interview myself.”

Lena let out a breathy laugh.

“How do you do it? Do you switch places whenever you have to ask a question and whenever you have to reply to it?”

“No, but I do put on the cape whenever I reply, otherwise I can’t get into the right mindset.”

Lena chuckled. “That doesn’t sound very practical.”

“It isn’t,” Kara said. “And Alex is convinced that switching between Kara and Supergirl in interviews is going to give me multiple-personality disorder.”

Lena shook her head, an involuntary grin on her face.

“Guess that’s one unintended consequence of the superhero lifestyle no one could’ve predicted.”

“Yeah,” Kara smiled. “I guess.”

“Maybe you should write an article about that,” Lena said absentmindedly, eyes back on the books in her lap. “From Multiple-Personality Disorder to Imposter Syndrome; A Psychological analysis of Superheroes.”

Kara smiled despite herself.

“Not sure my boss will fly for that. I’ll try and pitch it though.”

“Do.”

Lena’s fingers brushed over a small booklet.

“ _The Stranger_?” she asked, looking up at Kara.

“Thought you might like something a little existentialist,” Kara shrugged. “I hate it, personally, but it’s a classic, and all it talks about is the irrationality of human life so…”

Lena chuckled.

“So you thought I might like it?”

Kara blushed. “I genuinely have no idea. At this point, I’m just buying whatever’s on sale. You read faster than I can think of stuff you might like.”

Lena’s face brightened, like Kara’s words had been a massive compliment.

“What else?”

She took out a red book whose cover featured an artful design of a woman’s face.

“ _Ironhead_?”

“It’s a young-adult novel,” Kara said. “About a young woman who seeks to escape her marriage by dressing up as a man and joining the army to fight Napoleon.”

“Well,” Lena raised her eyebrows, a teasing sparkle in her eyes. “I see we’ve steered away from the more colonial side of youth literature and have moved towards the more progressive side of young-adult literature. I appreciate the newfound feminist angle.”

“Alright,” Kara rolled her eyes as Lena laughed in the background. “I get it, I ruined children’s books for you and you’re never going to let me forget it.”

“It wasn’t that bad,” Lena smiled. “And I’m grateful you decided to put some young-adult books with the existentialist French novels.”

“Yeah… also, I included some pretty heavy philosophy books. It was a buy one get one for free deal. Sorry.”

“What did you buy – Hannah Arendt? ”

“Yeah,” Kara rubbed the back of her head. “I _really_ ran out of ideas this week.”

“No,” Lena said. “It’s fine. I don’t mind a little philosophy. Even if it’s Arendt.”

“You've already read her work? Before I bought it, I didn’t even know who she was!”

“Well, I do occasionally dabble in social sciences,” Lena teased. “Though I suppose that's mostly your terrain.”

“And here I am falling short of all my humanities knowledge. I can’t say that I enjoyed studying anything to do with philosophy in college.”

“As long as you promise not to tell anyone about my hair, your secret’s safe with me,” Lena said mischievously. 

The way she smiled – the way she talked, almost like they were friends… it made Kara’s head feel fuzzy. She knew she had to be careful, had to be ready for anything, Alex had basically made her swear she would be. But every time Lena laughed or talked like they’d known each other for years, Kara would forget. And it would make her want to jump into whatever this was with both feet. She could almost feel her heart growing with every second she spent with Lena, and she knew how easily it could burst if things would go sour. It was so deliriously risky and stupid that Kara could feel it making her bold and brazen, higher than she’d like. It could all come crashing down so easily – it was exhilarating.

Kara shook her head. She couldn’t show how affected she was. She was here to give Lena some books and someone to talk to. That was all.

“So,” Kara awkwardly changed topics. “You’ve read this woman’s work before. Did you enjoy it?”

Lena tilted her head.

“Well,” she said, “I think she and I disagree on some pretty major points, but I can appreciate her attitude. And she has some rather interesting notions I like to think about.”

“Like what?”

Lena smiled.

“I once read a quote of hers. It said that “the smallest acts in the most limited circumstances bear the seed of the same boundlessness, because one deed, and sometimes one word, suffices to change every constellation.”

Lena smiled.

“I thought that was rather beautiful.”

“It is,” Kara said, a little breathless. Who knew Lena could recite philosophical musings as if they were poetry? “Very beautiful.”

“I don’t agree with it,” Lena shrugged. “The idea of the butterfly effect? One move and you change the world? That’s just a little too easy for me. Discredits all the hard work people do to actually purposefully change the world.”

Kara hummed non-committedly.

“Do you believe it?” Lena asked, and the question caught Kara off guard. “That one word one personal story, one tiny little thing could change the universe?”

Kara looked at Lena.

“I’d really like to believe so.”

* * *

The conversation wrapped up not much longer after that. Lena was happily sated with the new books she had to read, and Kara wasn’t stupid enough to overstay her welcome. Lena could grow bored of her easily, and Kara didn’t want to be in the impact zone when Lena decided she was getting tired of being nice.

So, after a while, Kara stood up, gathered her belongings, and readied herself to say goodbye. Just when she was about to leave, it struck her.

“Oh,” Kara said, “I almost forgot!”

She ruffled through her bag and fished out a tiny device, wrapped in a pair of earphones. Lena’s eyes followed curiously as Kara carefully unwound the strings to reveal an old black iPod, covered in various stickers.

“I found this in a box with all my old stuff. I figured that you might like some music, you know, in case you get tired of reading.”

“That’s… thank you,” Lena said slowly. “That’s very thoughtful of you.”

Kara blushed.

“It’s nothing, really,” she said, walking to the side of the cell where the hatch was located. Lena followed.

“I charged it last night. It’s pretty old and I haven’t used it in ages, but it should still work. I asked the guards to charge it for you whenever the battery’s drained.”

“Don’t trust me with my own charger yet?” Lena teased.

“While I don’t doubt you could _easily_ turn it into an advanced weapon in minutes – ”

Lena smiled.

“ – there’s no outlet in the cells. We had some problems with a woman who could use electricity to attack people, and well, it didn’t turn out so great. So no more outlets.”

“No more outlets,” Lena echoed.

Kara opened the hatch. Before she could put the iPod down on the metal tray, however, Lena extended her hand, so that her open palm was hovering just underneath Kara’s. Kara looked up and met Lena’s eyes for the second time that evening through the glass wall. Lena smiled, patiently, daringly.

And Kara felt bold.

Suddenly, touching Lena’s hand seemed like the most dangerous, most exciting thing in the whole universe, and Kara knew she couldn’t keep herself from doing it. The fear she felt earlier disappeared, and all that was left was a burning curiosity to see just what would happen if she did cross a line. If Alex ever found out, she would be in more trouble than she’d been before, but Kara didn’t care.

Lena’s eyes burned in hers as Kara slowly lowered her hand until she felt Lena’s cool skin against hers. And just like that, they were touching. The tips of Lena’s fingers grazed against the inside of her wrist, Kara’s knuckles brushing against the softest part of Lena’s palm. Kara was as close to the woman who wanted her dead as she could be. It was exhilarating. It took everything in her to remind herself of what she was doing – why she was touching Lena in the first place. She opened her hand, and let the iPod fall into Lena’s.

Lena’s eyes never left her, and Kara didn’t want them to. It felt like they were both testing the other. Like Kara was soundlessly asking if Lena would try to hurt her. Lena’s smirk didn’t answer, just continued to see how fast it would take for Kara to pull her hand away.

She didn’t. She wouldn’t.

Eventually, Lena’s smirk turned into a short laugh. Almost as if she was impressed, but that might’ve been Kara’s own wishful thinking.

“Well, Supergirl,” she murmured. “Thank you.”

Kara’s throat felt dry.

“You’re welcome,” she whispered back.

Lena smiled one last time as her fingers closed around the iPod in her hand, but not before her fingers brushed against Kara’s wrist one final time in a move so soft, it almost tickled.

“I’ll take good care of it.”

Kara nodded, almost sad when Lena finally pulled her hand away from the hatch. Her fingers trembled as she went to lock the hatch back up.

“Enjoy your, eh, books,” Kara said absentmindedly, stumbling over her words. Her left hand came up to cover the fingers that had just touched Lena’s hand like they’d been burned. Or like she’d touched something holy – her hand becoming a relic in the process – and had to protect herself.

“I will,” Lena smiled.

“I’ll come by soon to give you some new ones.”

It was more of a desperate promise that she’d come back – like she was expecting Lena to turn her down and crush her hopes of seeing her again – than an actual kindness on her part to keep Lena entertained. Lena seemed to see that too.

“I’ll be waiting.”

Kara blushed, and nodded quickly, muttering a final goodbye before she hurried out of the hallway, followed by Lena’s smile. How the other woman always managed to get the upper hand, even from the inside of a cell, was a mystery to Kara, but she found she didn’t quite mind it so much anymore.

* * *

A couple of days went by before the door at the end of the hallway opened, and the Other Lena could hear distinctly feminine footsteps approach.

The footsteps came to a stop near her cell and she smirked.

“So,” Lena asked from her place on the floor, organizing the stacks of books under her bed – her cell had gotten too full and she still needed some space to walk around, so she was forced to make a make-shift bookcase under her bed. “Tell me, do you exclusively listen to horrible 2000’s pop songs, or have you developed actual taste over the years since you last used this thing?”

She turned around with a smirk that quickly dropped when she looked up and found that the woman beside her cell was very clearly not Supergirl.

“Oh,” her excitement instantly turned into annoyance. “It’s you.”

“Sorry to disappoint,” Lena said dryly. “But we need to talk.”

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Hi guys! Thank you so much for reading! I truly hope you enjoyed this chapter because I so enjoyed writing it! They’re growing closer!! If you liked this story let me know either down in the comments or on [my Tumblr](https://thingsanddreamsandstuff.tumblr.com)
> 
> If you’re interested in the books Kara and Lena discussed, I included some links for you to check out:
> 
> [Conversations with Friends](https://www.goodreads.com/book/show/32187419-conversations-with-friends)  
> [My Year of Rest and Relaxation](https://www.goodreads.com/book/show/44279110-my-year-of-rest-and-relaxation?ac=1&from_search=true&qid=hXFoldOuVR&rank=1)  
> [The Secret Garden](https://www.goodreads.com/book/show/2998.The_Secret_Garden?from_search=true&from_srp=true&qid=p73MSE7EzU&rank=1)  
> [The Stranger](https://www.goodreads.com/book/show/49552.The_Stranger?ac=1&from_search=true&qid=JQJRdFC7Ba&rank=1)  
> [The Human Condition by Hannah Arendt](https://www.goodreads.com/book/show/127227.The_Human_Condition?ac=1&from_search=true&qid=9JnXDWk7AF&rank=3)
> 
> Also, Ironhead is actually a book my dad wrote which will come out in the US some time next year! You can find the first chapter in English right [here](https://www.flandersliterature.be/books-and-authors/book/ironhead) if you’re interested :)
> 
> Thank you so much for your patience and your lovely comments! The ending to this fic has already been planned out and I love it so much! I can’t wait to share it with you guys! Have a great day and stay safe!

**Author's Note:**

> Hi guys! Happy Supercorp Sunday!
> 
> This is new story based on an idea that bubbled up in my head after watching the 100th Supergirl episode! Evil Lena was soooo hot - and I mean that in the most respectable way possible - that I just had to write a story about her. And now with the pandemic - I finally found the time. 
> 
> I hope you all enjoyed it! New chapters will be coming soon! Please let me know what you think, either here or on [my tumblr!](https://thingsanddreamsandstuff.tumblr.com)  
> Anyway, thank you so much for reading, stay home and stay safe!
> 
> Lots of love!


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